Archive Magazine CD 1995/Archive Magazine CD 1995.iso/text/magazine/volume_08/issue_09

Text File | 1995-06-25 | 272KB | 5,805 lines

Products Available
8.9
Acorn price reductions − Acorn have dropped the prices of some of their
computers and peripherals as follows:
8.9
  A4 portable £1996 −−> £1521
8.9
  A3020 Floppy (2Mb) £843 −−> £703
8.9
  A3020 HD80 (2Mb) £1019 −−> £880
8.9
  Risc PC 2/210Mb + 17“ monitor £1938 −−> £1761
8.9
  Risc PC 5/210Mb + 17“ monitor £2114 −−> £1937
8.9
  Risc PC 9/420Mb + 17“ monitor £2466 −−> £2290
8.9
  OPL Editor £65 −−> £46
8.9
  Schedule £19 −−> £15
8.9
  Plotter £34 −−> £24
8.9
  Floating Point Accelerator £116 −−> £57
8.9
Acorn Replay Starter Kit − This includes a CD containing sample videos,
stills and examples of multimedia applications, plus AREncode which
allows you to compress your own films or add/change the accompanying
soundtracks. There are also two manuals: the user guide, which has
details of the software supplied, and ‘A Guide to Desktop Multimedia’,
with advice on creating your own multimedia applications, shooting
video, locating material, as well as tips on layout and style, etc. This
costs £41 inclusive through Archive. (Repeat entry because we forgot the
price last month!)
8.9
Almost Logo − The Advisory Unit have updated their popular turtle
graphics program. The suggestions for changes have come from teachers
throughout the UK who have been using the program in schools. New
features include easier creation of new procedures and teacher control
of step sizes to adjust the amount the turtle moves for a single unit.
The package will drive both Valiant and Jessop floor turtles, and all
commands can be supplied using a concept keyboard. Single user price is
£25 +VAT, site licence £75 +VAT, from the Advisory Unit.
8.9
Application compression − Partis Logistics offer a service for software
developers enabling approximately 100% more data to be stored on a
floppy for distribution. If required, copy protection systems can also
be added. Prices start from £250 per master disc.
8.9
ArcShare − ArcShare is an application for Microsoft Windows which allows
a PC to connect to an Acorn Access network, and requires only a standard
PC network card to operate. Fast Ethernet transfers are supported and it
offers automatic file-typing of data. Files of any size can be
transferred, and a simple FileManager style front end makes it easy to
understand. Arcshare can be called up from the file manager.
8.9
Files and directories can be created or deleted on the Acorn, from the
PC. Files can be copied from any position on the Acorn to any position
on the PC. CD-ROM, floppy drives, IDE and SCSI drives on the Acorn can
be accessed directly. The price is £79 +VAT from KCS Premier.
8.9
Brother laser printer − Following a good report from one of our
subscribers, Steve Godfrey, we have added a new laser printer to our
price list. The Brother HL660 is a 600×600 dpi printer with 2Mb RAM and
it runs at 6 pages per minute. Steve says that it works very well with
the Laserjet4 definition file on !Printers 1.28 and he is very pleased
with it. The Brother HL660 is available through Archive for £650 inc VAT
and carriage.
8.9
Budget games − If you enjoyed Space Invaders and Rocket Raid on the
Beeb, you’ll enjoy two budget games from Generation Design. RoboCatch is
Space Invaders with scenery. You don’t get 3D graphics or a CD’s worth
of sound, but this is a budget game... it only costs £7.99 (no VAT −
they’re not registered) and it comes on two discs! You get nine zones,
with five sub-levels, to complete. To gain points, you blow-up the
aliens, then catch their cargo. Along the way, you can get ‘power-ups’
which increase your score and status. Overall, this isn’t a game to last
you a lifetime, but the bombs do blow you up... and you do actually get
annoyed when you fail to beat your last high score.
8.9
In Caves of Confusion, you control a rocket flying horizontally through
a cave. In your path are obstacles which have to be avoided or blown up.
There are four increasingly harder levels. There’s lots of fun,
explosions and frustration, and all for £6.99 from Generation Design.
8.9
BurnOut − Oregan Developments have just released a new race game called
BurnOut − a racing game like no other. Driving on tracks that have more
in common with roller coaster rides than conventional race tracks, you
must pit your skill and reflexes against five other dune-buggy drivers.
You have twenty drivers to choose from, and ten different dune buggies.
Racing takes place on an island split into ten areas with different
scenery, such as woodland, beach, desert, canyon, town, mountains and
coastal port. Each area has a number of tracks, three on the first area,
rising to ten on the hardest. To qualify for the next race, you must
finish in either 1st, 2nd or 3rd place. Tracks are constructed not only
on the ground, but also on scaffold, logs, over or through canyons, and
through water. BurnOut features arcade-style intro sequences with stereo
music and sound effects playing simultaneously during gameplay. BurnOut
costs £24.95 inc VAT from Oregan Developments or £23 through Archive.
8.9
CineWorks CD − The new CineWorks video editing package from Oregan is
supplied with a sample CD. The CD is available separately, as a
demonstration of the product’s capabilities. The price is £19.95, which
is refundable against a purchase of CineWorks, when it is available.
8.9
Digital Symphony CD-ROM − Oregan have produced a CD-ROM containing 500Mb
of Digital Symphony tunes, as well as hundreds of samples for use in
creating your own music. The RRP is £29.95 from Oregan, or £28 through
Archive.
8.9
Digital Symphony upgrade − Oregan have upgraded Digital Symphony to
ensure compatibility with the Risc PC.
8.9
EasyFont 3 upgrade − Easy Font 3 from Fabis Computing has been upgraded
to accept fonts automatically from Zenta Multimedia’s new Font Emporium
CD and the new iSV font pack. Anyone wishing to upgrade should return
their original disc to Fabis with two first class stamps.
8.9
Ethernet Design and Installation Guide − This guide book from Acorn aims
to help you through the stages necessary to set up an Ethernet network
using Acorn equipment by giving you the information you need to discuss
your plans with network specialists so that they can design and build
the network you require. It is for network managers intending to install
an Ethernet network, either a new network, replacing a slower system, or
extending an existing network. It does not teach you how to design or
install the network yourself. The price is £20 through Archive.
8.9
Fast IDE Interface − RapIDE Risc PC, 32-bit DMA-based Interface for the
Risc PC. The Interface provides vastly increased throughput over the
Risc PC motherboard. Using alternative drives it is possible to achieve
reading speeds in excess of 8Mb per second using 32-bit direct memory
access. It provides two IDE ports, allowing up to four devices to be
connected, including IDE CD-ROMs. RapIDE Risc PC Interface costs £99
+VAT +£5 p&p, from Yellowstone Educational Solutions.
8.9
Faster Risc PC 486 cards − Aleph One have limited supplies of their
variants of the PC processor card for the Risc PC. Currently Cyrix
486DX2/66 or DX40 processors are available. The cards co-exist with
ARM610, 700 and 710 processors and, like the Acorn PC card, share the
Risc PC memory and peripherals. The DX2/66 costs £399 +VAT and the DX40
costs £349 +VAT from Aleph One.
8.9
Geordian protection systems − Geordian Systems have two products to
protect developers from computer piracy. Geordian Lock allows developers
to protect their own software using a keydisc system. Geordian Installer
offers the ability to protect software which has been installed to a
hard disc by ensuring that it will only run off the hard disc to which
it has been installed (although the software can be freely moved on that
hard disc). If the user needs to move the software to a different
medium, the software can be uninstalled and reinstalled to a different
drive. Contact Geordian Systems for details.
8.9
Insight 95 − Acorn are putting on a residential conference for head
teachers, department heads, IT coordinators and anyone involved in
planning or implementing educational IT strategies. The conference
includes two days of training; four 90 minute sessions on the first day,
and three on the second day. Topics include, planning and implementing
IT strategies, training in the use of Acorn RISC OS computers, software
and network systems, and use of popular RISC OS packages from third
parties. There are almost 100 sessions to choose from, covering a wide
range of packages at different levels.
8.9
The conference is being held at the Hinckley Island Hotel on Friday 14th
and Saturday 15th July. The cost is £499, but bookings received before
26th May 1995 qualify for a reduced price of £249 +VAT (£292.58
inclusive). The price includes all meals plus accommodation for the
night of the 14th July.
8.9
For those unable to attend, Acorn offer a range of courses at their
training centre in Cambridge.
8.9
Details can be obtained from The Insight 95 Administrator at Acorn.
8.9
MacroLife − Macrolife is a desktop version of the famous game of life,
invented by the British mathematician John Conway in 1970. It displays a
scrollable window onto a Life plane, or grid, onto which you can place
patterns of cells and watch how they evolve. ‘Life’ is a fascinating
game in which patterns of cells on a two-dimensional plane evolve,
according to a simple rule. Despite its simplicity, Life patterns can
behave like living organisms, moving, growing and even − theoretically,
at least − reproducing and evolving.
8.9
A copy of the full program can be obtained by sending a cheque for £8 to
Chris Taylor, 7 Prideaux Place, London WC1X 9PP. If you are on the net,
he can email you a copy (without the printed manual) for £7. Chris will
then donate four pounds to Motivation, a charity which designs
inexpensive wheelchairs and organises their production using local
materials in countries which cannot afford commercial models.
8.9
Money Manager − This is a new accounts package from Wynded Software,
designed for home or business use where there is the need to store all
financial transactions in an orderly way. Often only a simple mouse
selection is needed, although keyboard shortcuts are available as you
grow more accustomed to using the package. Capable of storing up to 500
transactions in each month (6,000 in a 12 month data file). Easy-to-use
reporting facilities are included, allowing the specification of which
accounts should be used. Reports can then be exported to almost any
wordprocessor or DTP package.
8.9
NetReader − NetReader, from Digital Phenomena, is an off-line reader for
Usenet messages downloaded from Internet Conferences. The package is
shareware (£10 registration fee). Private and newsgroup messages are
supported; message files should be in “#! rnews” format. Facilities
include auto expiry of messages, and automatic signatures.
8.9
NoticeBoard − A new version has just been released by The Really Good
Software Company. Notice Board is the electronic display system which
enables sequences of poster-like displays to be run on unattended
monitors. The advanced version of NoticeBoard has an improved front-end
for easier page setup, and an option to use fades between pages whilst
the program is running. Current users can obtain an upgrade by returning
their existing disc to RGSC. The new version is £35 inclusive.
8.9
NStore 4D − H.S. Software have updated their National Curriculum record-
keeping package. Automated report writing has been added, and the
package includes the latest (1995) level descriptions in all the
subjects, for both primary and secondary. NStore 4D costs £44.95
inclusive, and includes a manual and two program discs, sufficient for
six classes of 36 children. Additional program discs for use in the same
school are available for £3 each.
8.9
Upgrades are available for existing users (£4.70 from version 4.0,
£16.95 from version 3.0 − you need to return your program disc, or quote
your disc registration number when ordering).
8.9
Outline fonts from iSV − iSV aim to produce a new item each month. Among
some of their latest releases are two outline fonts packs (277 and 298).
The fonts are mostly PD versions from the USA. iSV have converted them,
added scaffold lines and kerning data, and packaged them for the Acorn
market. Many of the letters have been re-drawn and missing ones
included. In pack 298, there are 39 families, each with Regular,
Oblique, Condensed, Condensed Oblique, Extended, Extended Oblique (about
273 fonts). Pack 277 contains 14 families with about 120 fonts. The
packs cost £25 each, or £45 for the two, from iSV Products − p&p £1.50.
8.9
Plantwise − Those who have seen the quality of Sherston’s Bodywise
software will be pleased that their next offering, Plantwise, is now
available. “Plantwise allows pupils to explore all aspects of plant life
in highly intuitive and informative ways.” It covers the major part of
the National Curriculum requirements for green plants as organisms at
both KS2 and KS3, and can be tailored to present easier or harder text
as required. The pack includes search cards, experiment sheet, user’s
manual and a guide to using the software in the classroom. Plantwise
costs £44.95 +VAT from Sherston or £50 through Archive.
8.9
Rocket for your Pocket − ExpLAN have created a set of spreadsheet
datafiles for the Acorn Pocket Book and Psion 3/3a computers, for use in
Science, Maths and Technology. When used in conjunction with a Payloader
rocket, it enables pupils to track the rocket’s flight using a hand-held
protractor device, and calculate the height with the Pocket Book. The
datafiles contain formulae to calculate the average height from multiple
readings, filter out erroneous measurements, calculate the burn-time for
a given engine and calculate the thrust and acceleration. The payload
carried can be varied, and a graph of mass against height can then be
plotted. Further details from ExpLAN.
8.9
Spelling Book − Spelling Book, from Creative Curriculum Software, is
aimed at users from 4 years old and upwards, provided they need help
with their spelling! It integrates with any word processor on every
Acorn 32-bit computer and is easy to configure and use.
8.9
It is not a spell checker, but rather, a computerised spelling book.
When activated, dictionaries are instantly integrated in alphabetical
order. Dictionaries responding to curriculum needs can be simply and
quickly created, and a number of preset dictionaries are supplied with
Spelling Book. Also included on the disc are three spelling games:
Wordsearch, Fireworks and Art Gallery. Single user £39 +VAT; site
licence £89 +VAT.
8.9
Textease templates − PaperSoft Ltd have just produced a selection of
templates for use with Textease. The first two selections contain 100+
templates for Paper Direct Business Papers and 40+ templates for Paper
Direct Fun/Theme Papers (they cost £24.95 and £14.95 inclusive,
respectively). For label printing, there are templates for Avery laser,
and Avery b&w and colour inkjet labels (the laser label templates cost
£14.95, the inkjet labels cost £7.95). Finally, there are templates for
Avery’s indexing system. The template disc includes precision software
for each of the IndexMaker and ReadyIndex sheets, and for each number of
divisions (5, 6, 10 and 12). Label and Index discs also contain a small
clipart library of useful label and indexing icons.
8.9
Trip − This package from Creative Curriculum Software has been designed
to provide assistance with the organising of school visits at home and
abroad. It is a purpose-designed database application for the trip
organiser, which can also be used to illustrate, for educational
purposes, the practical use of a database. Trip handles all the accounts
relating to a school visit − deposits, staged payments, special prices,
payment for optional activities, etc. It also stores all personal
details required − emergency addresses, dates-of-birth − and records
items received, (passport, medical information, etc). It costs £14.95
+VAT from CCS.
8.9
VersaTile − VersaTile, from Dial Solutions, is a tiling program designed
to encourage students of any age to explore geometry. The aim of the
software is to allow investigation of 2D shapes with the minimum of
restrictions, yet to utilise the computer’s power to provide a dramatic
increase in accuracy and productivity over conventional paper, pencil
and scissor techniques. It is a flexible tool that allows tiles to be
drawn easily and manipulated in a similar way to moving shapes around on
a table. VersaTile comes on two discs, and includes Oak Solutions’
!DrawPlot and !DrawPrint, plus a disc of examples.
8.9
VersaTile costs £45 +VAT for a single user, £100 +VAT for a primary
school licence and £200 +VAT for a secondary licence from CCS.
8.9
VideoTrak − This new release from the Really Good Software Company
should be welcomed by video enthusiasts keen to get their video
collection organised. Once details have been entered into VideoTrak, you
can browse through the catalogues and easily locate any film by title,
actor, director, etc. With all categories fully cross-referenced, just
selecting, for example, an actor’s name will provide a list of all his
or her films, with instant access to detailed information on individual
films and which tape they are on. VideoTrak costs £15 inclusive from
RGSC.
8.9
Wing chair pricing − The kneeling chairs that we have been recommending
(see Archive 8.3 p4) are going up in price to £340. However, I have one
in stock (black base with grey upholstery) at £290. Give us a ring if
you are interested − first come, first served.
8.9
Review software received...
8.9
We have received review copies of the following: •CDFast (for Networks)
(u), •Macrolife (e), •Money Manager (u), •More Talking Stories (e),
•NoticeBoard (m), •Outline fonts from iSV (u), •Spelling Book (e), •Trip
(e), •Textease Templates (u), •VersaTile (e), •VideoTrak (u) •Vzap (u).
8.9
e=Education, b=Business, bk=Book, c=Comms, g=Game, h=Hardware,
l=Language, m=Multimedia, u=Utility, a=Art.
8.9
If you would like to review any of these products, please contact the
Archive office. Potential reviewers will need to show that they would
use the product in a professional capacity or that they have some
knowledge of the particular field. u
8.9

8.9
4th Dimension   1 Percy Street, Sheffield, S3 8AU. (0114­270­0661)
(0114­278­1091)
8.9
Abacus Training    29 Okus Grove, Upper Stratton, Swindon, Wilts, SN2
6QA.
8.9
Acorn Direct   FREEPOST, 13 Dennington Road, Wellingborough, Northants,
NN8 2BR. (01933­279300)
8.9
Acorn Computers Ltd    Acorn House, Vision Park, Histon, Cambridge, CB4
4AE. (01223­254254) (01223­254262)
8.9
Aleph One Ltd   The Old Courthouse, Bottisham, Cambridge, CB5 9BA.
(01223­811679) (01223­812713)
8.9
APDL    39 Knighton Park Road, Sydenham, London, SE26 5RN.
8.9
Apricote Studios (p16)  2 Purls Bridge Farm, Manea, Cambridgeshire, PE15
0ND. (01354­680432)
8.9
Avie Electronics (p18)  7 Overbury Road, Norwich. (01603­416863)
(01603­788640)
8.9
Calligraph Ltd   53 Panton Street, Cambridge CB2 1HL. (01223­566642)
(01223­566643)
8.9
Clares Micro Supplies   98 Middlewich Road, Rudheath, Northwich,
Cheshire, CW9 7DA.
8.9
  (01606­48511) (01606­48512)
8.9
Colton Software   2 Signet Court, Swanns Road, Cambridge, CB5 8LA.
(01223­311881) (01223­312010)
8.9
Computer Concepts (pp8/12)   Gaddesden Place, Hemel Hempstead, Herts,
HP2 6EX. (01442­63933) (01442­231632)
8.9
Creative Curriculum Software   5 Clover Hill Road, Savile Park, Halifax,
HX1 2YG. (01422­340524) (01422­346388)
8.9
Dalriada Data Technology   145 Albion Street, Kenilworth, Warkwickshire,
CV8 2FY. (01926­53901)
8.9
David Pilling   P.O.Box 22, Thornton Cleveleys, Blackpool, FY5 1LR.
8.9
Digital Phenomena   104 Manners Road, Southsea, Hants, PO4 0BG.
8.9
EESOX   5 Hillfield Road, Comberton, Cambridge, CB3 7DB. (01223­264242)
8.9
Evolution Computer (p7)  An den Klippen 23, 57462 OLPE, Germany. (00-49-
2761-3062)
8.9
ExpLAN   St Catherine’s House, 20 Plymouth Road, Tavistock, Devon, PL19
8AY. (01822­613868) (01822­610868)
8.9
Fabis Computing   Sarford House, Swadlincote, Derbyshire, DE11 9SL.
(01283­552761)
8.9
Generation Design   2 Whitecliff Gardens, Blandord Forum, Dorset DT11
7BU.
8.9
Geordian Systems   18 Megdova Str., 131 22 ILION, Athens, Greece.
(+30­271­24355) ([e-mail]­t.gr /
[e-mail]­t.gr)
8.9
HCCS Ltd   575­583 Durham Road, Gateshead, NE9 5JJ. (0191­487­0760)
(0191­491­0431)
8.9
Hodge Electronic Services    16 Mold Road, Mynydd Isa, Clwyd, CH7 6TD.
(01244­550803)
8.9
HS Software   56 Hendrefolian Avenue, Sketty, Swansea, SA2 7NB.
(01792­204519)
8.9
  (01792­298283)
8.9
Iota Software Ltd   Iota House, Wellington Court, Cambridge, CB1 1HZ.
(01223­566789)
8.9
  (01223­566788)
8.9
Irlam Instruments   133 London Road, Staines, Middlesex TW18 4HN.
(01895­811401)
8.9
iSV Products   86, Turnberry, Home Farm, Bracknell, Berks, RG12 8ZH.
(01344­55769)
8.9
KCS Premier   71­73 Chapel Street, Leigh, Lancashire, WN7 2DA.
(01942­677777)
8.9
  (01942­672300)
8.9
Krisalis Software   Teque House, Mason’s Yard, Downs Row, Moorgate,
Rotherham, S60 2HD. (01709­372290) (01709­368403)
8.9
Kudlian Soft   8 Barrow Road, Kenilworth, Warwickshire, CV8 1EH.
(01926­851147)
8.9
Lindis International   Wood Farm, Linstead Magna, Halesworth, Suffolk,
IP19 0DU. (0198­685­477) (0198­685­460)
8.9
Longman Logotron   124 Cambridge Science Park, Milton Road, Cambridge
CB4 4ZS.
8.9
  (01223­425558) (01223­425349)
8.9
Millipede Electronic Graphics   Cambridge House, Hargrave, Bury St
Edmunds, Suffolk, IP29 5HS. (01284­850594) (01284­850351)
8.9
Newman Software   c/o Computer Centre, Newman College, Genners Lane,
Bartley Green, Birmingham, B32 3NT.
8.9
Oak Solutions   Dial House, 12 Chapel Street, Halton, Leeds, LS15 7RN
(0113­232­6992)
8.9
  (0113­232­6993)
8.9
Octopus Systems   9 Randwell Close, Ipswich, IP4 5ES. (01473­728943)
(01473­270643)
8.9
Oregan Developments   36 Grosvenor Avenue, Streetly, Sutton Coldfield,
B74 3PE. (0121­353­6044)
8.9
Papersoft   10 Dunlin Road, Hemel Hempstead, Herts, HP2 6LU.
(01442­391967)
8.9
Partis Logistics   44 Alder Road, Hadrian Park, Wallsend, Tyne & Wear,
NE28 9UB. (0191­295­5988) (0191­295­5988)
8.9
Quantum Software   35 Pinewood Park, Deans, Livingston, EH54 8NN.
(01506­411162 after 6)
8.9
Sherston Software   Angel House, Sherston, Malmesbury, Wilts. SN16 0LH.
(01666­840433) (01666­840048)
8.9
Silicon Vision Ltd   Signal House, Lyon Road, Harrow, Middlesex, HA1
2AG. (0181­422­3556) (0181­248­3589)
8.9
Softease (p15)  The Old Courthouse, St Peters Churchyard, Derby, DE1
1NN. (01332­204911) or (01684­73173)
8.9
Soft Rock Software   FREEPOST (BS7978), Westbury­on­Trim, Bristol, BS10
7BR.
8.9
Superior Software   P.O. Box 6, Brigg, S Humberside, DN20 9NH.
(01652­658585) (01652­657807)
8.9
The Advisory Unit   Endymion Road, Hatfield Herts, AL10 8AU.
(017072­65443) (017072­73651)
8.9
The ARM Club   Freepost ND6573, London, N12 0BR. (0171­624­9918)
(0181­446­3020)
8.9
The Really Good Software Company   39 Carisbrooke Road, Harpenden,
Herts., AL5 5QS.
8.9
Topologika   Islington Wharf, Church Hill, Penryn, Falmouth, Cornwall,
TR10 8AT. (01326­377771) (01326­377771)
8.9
Yellowstone Educ. Solutions   Welbeck House, Welbeck Road, Luton, Beds.
LU2 0HD.
8.9
Zenta Multimedia   10 Ravenhurst Drive, Birmingham, B43 7RS.
(0121­358­3054) (0121­358­5969)
8.9

8.9
Archive Monthly Disc
8.9
u Arctic demo (Richard Proctor) from Ned Abell − see Comment
Column, page 27.
8.9
u Files from Keith Hodge’s Risc PC Column − page 53.
8.9
u PhoneDay-really(!)-ready STD application from Jim Nottingham − page
28.
8.9
u Educational jargon from Audrey Laski and Richard Rymarz − page 25.
8.9
u The winning font from our font competition − page 26.
8.9
u Files from Gerald Fitton’s Column − page 45.
8.9
u Sample module program from Nicholas Marriott’s Module Writing article
− page 63.
8.9

8.9
Norwich Computer Services     96a Vauxhall Street, Norwich, NR2 2SD.
(01603-766592) (764011)
8.9
                      email: [e-mail]
8.9

8.9
Fact-File
8.9
(The numbers in italic are fax numbers)
8.9
Government Health Warning − Reading this could seriously effect your
spiritual health
8.9
He thought his run of lottery ticket entries had another week to go, so
when his numbers came up, he thought he’d won two million pounds. Then
he discovered it was the previous week that his entries had finished,
not this week. So what did he do? He committed suicide.
8.9
“If only I had checked the ticket...” “If only my friend had reminded me
that we only had a limited run of entries...” “If only... ” “If only...
” “If only I hadn’t reacted so badly, my wife and two children wouldn’t
now be without husband and father.” “If only... ” “If only... ”
8.9
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
8.9
“Well, I try to follow the Sermon on the Mount − do unto others, etc.”
Excuse me, when did you last actually read it? Have you ever read it?
(Matthew chapters 5 to 7.) Here are a couple of quotes to remind you...
8.9
But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject
to judgment... ...anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the
fire of hell.  (Matthew 5:22)
8.9
And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.
It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole
body to go into hell.  (Matthew 5:30)
8.9
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
8.9
“But what IS hell?” Well, if what Jesus said is true (and I say “IF”),
then hell is realising that it IS true − but too late! Jesus spelt out
plainly the joys available to those who believe in him but he also
explained that if people reject (or choose to ignore) his claims then,
when they die, they will be given what they chose − a life without God −
and that is hell. Hell is realising too late that you will never know
the joy of God’s love.
8.9
“If only I had read the bible.” “If only I had paid more attention to
the burblings of that idiot Paul Beverley.” “If only... ” “If only... ”
“If only I hadn’t thought I knew better.” “If only... ” “If only... ”
8.9
For God’s sake, and for your own sake, check it out. Jesus might just
have been telling the truth.
8.9
P.B.
8.9
Paul Beverley
8.9
How do you like the new-look Archive?
8.9
Thanks for all the responses to the new-look Archive last month
(including the gentleman who thought it was so appalling it must have
been an April Fool!). By and large, you liked the new layout but felt
that the headings were a bit too bold. So, I have reduced the UltraBold
to ExtraBold − I hope that does the trick.
8.9
Archive is YOUR magazine
8.9
Let me make the statement, as I do periodically, that this is YOUR
magazine. You are the ones that make it happen, not me. If you write
lots of good articles, it will continue to be (what I believe is) a very
good magazine, but if you stop writing, Archive dies overnight. The
supply of articles has been getting a little thin of late and for the
last couple of months, it’s been touch and go whether I would have
enough articles. Please keep them coming! Thank you.
8.9
Please support NCS
8.9
At one time, we were able to make quite sizeable charitable donations
from NCS − it was earning more than I and my family needed to live on −
but those days are gone, I fear. As you may have guessed, these last two
years have not been easy and we aren’t out of the woods yet. I have to
confess that our account with Acorn wasn’t up-to-date when the first
batch of PC cards came through but when we realised it, they had all
been allocated to other dealers. I apologise for that over-sight which
has meant an even longer wait for many of you. The cards are now coming
through, so just listen to the ansaphone we’ve set up on 01603-766585
for the latest news.
8.9
Once again, thanks for all your support − I do appreciate it!
8.9
Bankrupt Stock
8.9
Last month we bought up some stock from a company that was closing down.
The following are still available − please ring 01603-766592 if you are
interested in any of them.
8.9
N.B. All items are brand new (12 month warranty) unless otherwise
marked.
8.9
(We have also added in one or two of our own bits which we want to sell
off!)
8.9
New Computers & monitors
8.9
ACB45 (9Mb) Risc PC with AKF85 − £2466 −−> £2200
8.9
ACB25 (5Mb) Risc PC with AKF85 − £2114 −−> £1900
8.9
A3010 (1Mb) with Action Pack software − £299 −−> £260
8.9
A3010 (1Mb) with Learning Curve software − £299 −−> £260
8.9
A3010 (2Mb) with Early Years software − £399 −−> £350
8.9
Old computers & monitors
8.9
A3000 (2Mb) RISC OS 3.1, RGB monitor, HCCS SCSI card − £250 (S/H − no
warranty)
8.9
Podules & add-ons
8.9
Midi interface for A3000/3010/4000 − £53 −−> £30 (S/H − no warranty)
8.9
HCCS User Port / Analogue − £46 −−> £23 (S/H − no warranty)
8.9
Dual 3½“ floppy drives in external box − £25 (S/H − no warranty)
8.9
CD drives
8.9
Morley dual speed SCSI drive, caddy loading, for Risc PC. £290 −−> £195
8.9
Ultimate dual speed (ex-demo) external drive +A5000 type interface. £263
−−> £170 (no warranty)
8.9
Mac SCSI CD-ROM − £50 (no warranty)
8.9
Removable drives
8.9
105Mb internal IDE drive (with 1 cartridge) − £370 −−> £240
8.9
Refurbished 105Mb external SCSI drive (with 1 cartridge) − £410 −−> £210
(6 month warranty)
8.9
105Mb cartridges (if bought with a drive) − £60 −−> £50
8.9
Software
8.9
TouchType − £49.35 −−> £30 (See last month’s offer − page 3)
8.9
Schema 1 − £125 −−> £40 (upgrade to Schema 2 is about £60)
8.9

8.9

8.9
Help!!!!
8.9
Acorn DTP − I want to print out an A5 booklet by printing onto both
sides of A4 sheets, folding and stapling. Simple. Can Acorn DTP do it?
8.9
Charles Morris, 30 Southcourt Road, Cardiff, CF3 7DB. (01222-490766)
8.9
Alternative Risc PC keyboards − After several attempts to learn to
touch-type using a keyboard tutor, I have given up in disgust. I find
that, after 20 minutes sitting in the ‘recommended position’, my wrists
and arms begin to ache and I rapidly revert to my two-fingered approach.
Since I seem to be incompatible with the PC type keyboard, the next best
option is to find an input device more suitable to me. Has any reader
had experience of / problems in using, one of the Microsoft Natural
keyboards on the Risc PC? Does anyone know of any other alternative
(ergonomic) keyboards? I recall that some years ago the Maltronic(?)
keyboard was going to revolutionise typing.
8.9
Ashoke Patel, Ilford
8.9
Basic Wimp Programming book − This Dabs Press book by Allan Senior is
now out of print. Does anyone have a copy that they would be willing to
donate? I have a customer who wants to buy one and if you donate the
book (and disc) to me, I’ll sell it to him and give the money to
charity. Any offers?
8.9
Ed.
8.9
Christian PD − I am going to be setting up a PD library for the
Christian Acorn Users Group. This will cover clipart, resources, etc. If
you have any material, please send it to me on 3½“ disc. Thank you.
8.9
Andrew Bower, 60 Barcheston Road, Knowle, Solihull, B93 9JT
8.9
Development software − I have recently started reading a book by Paul
Overaa, on program design techniques using Warnier diagrams. Does any
Archive reader know of some suitable software (one or several bits) that
will assist in producing these Warnier diagrams. The Warnier technique
relies on using sets of curly brackets that define a group of operations
and the order that they are to be performed.
8.9
Ashoke Patel, Ilford
8.9
Graphing software − In the past, a number of my graphing applications
have been distributed by Norwich Computer Services at various times on
several of the NCS Shareware or monthly discs. Since the Shareware discs
are no longer available, I have collected all these applications
together onto one disc. The disc can be obtained direct from myself at a
modest charge of £4. This registration fee entitles the user to upgrade
at any time to the latest version. The many users who are already
registered can, of course, upgrade to these latest versions in the usual
way.
8.9
The applications included on the current disc are !GraphDraw,
!MultiPlot, !ChartDraw, !FNPlotter, !Surface, !3DFnEdit, !Text>Draw.
GraphDraw allows data to be fit, for example, to a straight line, a
polynomial or spline curve. MultiPlot allows a number of curves to be
superimposed on the same graph. ChartDraw allows the production of bar
and pie charts. The 3D surface plotters are still under development, but
are functional. The package is available from:
8.9
Chris Johnson, 7 Lovedale Grove, Balerno, Edinburgh, EH14 7DR
8.9
Microwriter − I have used a device called a Microwriter since I was in
secondary school. I used it for taking notes in lessons or as an
alternative keyboard for generating text before transferring via
Commstar II, into View on the BBC Master for final polishing. I have now
bought an A3010 and want to continue using my Microwriter in a similar
fashion. I would be grateful if anyone could let me know if there is any
suitable software available.
8.9
John Rees, Swn-w-Nant, Stuart Street, Treherbert, Rhondda, CF42 5PR
8.9
More TurboDriver problems − My computer setup consists of an A3010 (2Mb
RAM, floppy only), AKF17 and Canon BJ200, usually running Impression
Publisher or Draw. Recently I started having problems with the
TurboDriver version 4. When I start printing anything more than a few Kb
in size, I get an error message, “LZW code too large (StreamSquash)”. I
have tried talking to CC but they say that there is nothing wrong with
the driver, and that my problem is unique! I would be very grateful for
any assistance.
8.9
Islam Uddin, London
8.9
Mouse operations − I am trying to help an arthritis sufferer to use a
mouse. Most difficult are click and drag operations. I am aware of
Warfarin that replaces the mouse with ALT+keys but what I am looking for
is the ability to move the mouse but assign keyboard keys (without
<shift> or <Alt> − perhaps the top three of the numeric keypad) as the
mouse buttons. Can anyone help?
8.9
John Thorn, Cardiff ([e-mail])
8.9
Printing drawfiles − How can I print a drawfile as a header from within
Basic at the top of the sheet, and not have a form feed, so that I can
then print my Bridge results (see H & T, p 50) all in one go? I can draw
it from Basic using the PDriver commands, but it insists on doing a full
page instead of the limited rectangle I require.
8.9
Also, does anyone know of a PD program that will edit the modern non-
squashed ‘PrinterDefn’ files as the original one did?
8.9
John Wallace, Crawley
8.9
Risc PC drives etc − We have had a request regarding several matters
which may be of general interest, so if anyone would like to answer them
for the magazine, we would be most grateful.
8.9
Can someone explain what the Enhanced IDE, Fast SCSI and Wide SCSI disc
formats are, and how they relate to future developments of new machines
from Acorn? Can any of these be used already on the Risc PC and, if so,
what is needed to use them? Will it be possible to add SCSI-3 to the
system when the specifications are finalised? Also, is there any news
regarding the PCI adaptor to allow PCI expansion cards to be added to
the Risc PC?
8.9
Chris Walker, Norfolk
8.9
Squashed lines on printouts − When printing, I find that, every so
often, my BJ300 printer will produce a squashed line of text, about one
per page. I was going to ask whether this was a known problem with the
printer, because a colleague has had similar problems and, since we have
the same printer, we assumed that it was that causing the problem. Then
I noticed the same effect very occasionally in Archive, so it looks as
if other printers may be vulnerable. Does anyone know what causes this
effect, and whether anything can be done about it?
8.9
Danny Lawrence, Nottingham
8.9
Squirrel 2 transfer − Does anyone know if it’s possible to unlock
Squirrel 2 from one machine and install it on another (I’m about to
upgrade to a Risc PC and Squirrel is locked onto my A5000‘s ID number)?
Digital Services, who used to produce Squirrel, seem to have
disappeared, and left users with this problem. Does anyone know if
Squirrel has been taken over by another company, as it would be a shame
to lose such a useful program?
8.9
Jon Aylwin, 4 St Margarets Close, Hemyock, Devon, EX15 3XJ. (01823-
680111)
8.9
Transport from Winchester − A pensioner from Winchester has offered some
BBC stuff for our charity-Beeb project. Is there anyone in the
Winchester area able to help get the bits up to Norwich? Is anyone
heading up to Norwich on business at some stage with an empty car who
could actually bring it? Beryl says she has all the packing materials
but it’s almost a car-full so it would cost a lot to send be carrier.
Any help offered would be much appreciated − please contact the NCS
office or RepairZone (01603-400477) who are administering the scheme.
8.9
Beryl Orchard, Winchester
8.9

8.9
Evolution Computer
8.9
(New)
8.9

8.9
CC
8.9
From 8.8 page 23
8.9

8.9
Non-Designer’s Design Book
8.9
(New)
8.9

8.9
CC
8.9
From 8.8 page 24
8.9

8.9
CD-ROM Column
8.9
Andrew Flowerdew
8.9
I was going to do a CD-ROM Column last month but those naughty people at
Acorn sent me a PC Card for my Risc PC and, well, I just had to play...
8.9
My first impressions of the way the PC Card handles CD-ROM software are
very favourable. Most of the software that I have tried has worked,
including movies, images, etc. However, since I have not received the
sound card yet, I can’t comment about sound. The only problems I have
encountered so far have been in some of the introductory software on
some magazine CD-ROMs discs. Also, some of the Dorling Kindersley
software has introductory screens where the colour looks decidedly
psychedelic. This seems to be cured when the software takes you to the
main body of information where everything returns to normal.
8.9
I think it would be a good idea to try to compile a database of CD-ROMs
which work, half work, or fail using the Risc PC PC Card and the PC
Podule but, before we start, I would like to hear from readers what
fields they think the database should contain, so please write or e-mail
me with suggestions.
8.9
Installing a CD-ROM in a Risc PC
8.9
A few of our staff took advantage of the Acorn offer, just before
Christmas, to buy a CD-ROM drive for £29 if you bought a Risc PC. The
Risc PCs arrived before Christmas, although the CD-ROM drives didn’t
arrive until the last week of February. I recalled the computers to the
computer room and opened the CD-ROM packaging. Great joy! There was a
clearly written manual and well laid out components, right the way down
to ribbon cables that were bent and laid out so that they would fit into
the Risc PC correctly. The whole pack was so easy that I managed to
install both CD-ROM drives into the two Risc PCs in less than 30
minutes. Well done, Cumana!
8.9
I spent a little while making sure the drives were set up and working
well for their users and found Cumana’s Speedy CD utility (supplied with
the drives) easy to set up and use. I must admit that I was pleasantly
surprised by the speed and easy of use of the system and look forward to
doing some raw tests on the drive in the future.
8.9
CD-ROM of the month
8.9
I hope that this section will develop into a way in which you, the
reader, can let others know about CD-ROMs that you use and why you like
them. I was going to mention the BitFolio Graphics CD-ROM but it was
reviewed last month. However, it is one of those CDs which is so popular
that I have had to put it onto a large hard disc on my network − it is
used by large numbers of both adults and pupils.
8.9
So CD-ROM of the month is Treasure Chest, from NorthWest SEMERC. This is
a CD-ROM of resources which is well laid out and has a clear and very
understandable user interface. The CD contains a large number of
graphics and sounds set out in topic areas, and the quality of the
artwork is generally superb. It is very easy to use and is designed to
allow access for special needs pupils. This CD-ROM sits on my network,
working quickly and easily, and is a very useful resource for both
teachers and pupils.
8.9
Grief from Scotland
8.9
I received a letter from Fred Grieve, a teacher in Scotland, who has had
a rather bad experience with an HCCS Ultimate SCSI podule. Fred bought
the podule partly to access PhotoCD drives, but found that he had
problems accessing PhotoCD images on discs containing more than 80
images. He also had a problem with various other CD-ROMs, where the
software would produce error messages when trying to access different
parts of the disc.
8.9
When Fred contacted HCCS, they explained that the errors were due to a
change in the firmware (the software held in the ROM chip inside the
drive) made by Mitsumi, the company who make the drive. They also said
that Armstrong Walker, the company who write their software, were
working on a fix.
8.9
Although HCCS have offered Fred an upgrade to a newer, more expensive
drive (for the difference in cost), he feels that their response has
been less than satisfactory, in that the errors that he has encountered
have still not been sorted out and he does not want to spend any more
money.
8.9
Fred finally gave up and ordered a Cumana SCSI II interface and CD-ROM
from his helpful local dealer, Moray Micro, which he finds ‘far
superior’ to the HCCS drive. However, the episode has left a very sour
taste and Armstrong Walker have still got Fred’s PhotoCD which he lent
to them for tests.
8.9
The rights and wrongs of this case can be argued until the cows come
home but it does highlight a few points about CD-ROM drives, interfaces
and software.
8.9
Manufacturers of CD-ROM drives are continually trying to improve the
performance of their drives and this often means a change in the
firmware in the drive. This can have repercussions for the developers of
interface software.
8.9
This is usually not a problem for companies who sell a specific drive/
interface package, since the package as a whole should have been tested
thoroughly before being sold. However, when purchasing a drive for SCSI
interface, it is worth checking whether the drive is supported by the
SCSI software which comes with the interface.
8.9
In general, if you are using SCSI, you should be using CDFS v2.20 or
above. You then need a driver for the particular drive you are
purchasing. So, for example, I use a Toshiba driver module from Morley
to drive my two Toshiba drives and this setup works with both my Cumana
interface and my creaking, old Oak interface.
8.9
The situation may become clearer with the advent of the Eesox SCSI II
CD-ROM driver. This piece of software claims to allow any SCSI II CD-ROM
drive to work with Acorn’s CDFS. I hope to test it soon.
8.9
Digital video support
8.9
The table above shows the current state of play, as provided by Acorn’s
multimedia guru, Stuart Palmer. I will aim to update the list as time
goes by and if anyone has any information which will help with this,
please contact me via Archive or the address below.
8.9
Green Book − White Book ?
8.9
The main standards for CDs are set out in various documents, known by
different colours. The original standard was for CD Digital Audio and
was known as the Red Book. This was followed by the Yellow Book, which
set out standards for CD-ROM. The Yellow Book specification was later
modified to cope with CD-ROM XA and multi-session Photo CD discs.
8.9
However, recently, two more standards were published, one by Philips
called the Green Book standard, which was designed to lay down standards
for CD-i players and another, the White Book standard, which covers the
new Video CD system of MPEG1 full-screen, full-motion video.
8.9
In practice, unless you have a large number of old Philips CDi video
CDs, the White Book standard is the most important of these two and you
should certainly ask if the drive you are going to buy is White Book
compliant.
8.9
As always, you can contact me via Archive or c/o DCPS, Cranbrook, Kent
TN17 3NP or via e-mail on [e-mail]. u
8.9

8.9

8.9
CD-ROM drives and MPEG support
8.9
                                                    GreenBook   WhiteBo
ok
8.9
Cumana
8.9
Panasonic CR562 IDE  No*  Yes
8.9
Panasonic CR562 Parallel  No*  Yes
8.9
Panasonic CL503 SCSI  Yes  Yes
8.9
Series 600 (Sony CDU561) SCSI  Yes  Yes
8.9
Morley
8.9
Toshiba 3401    Yes
8.9
Toshiba 3501    Yes
8.9
Toshiba 4101    Yes
8.9
Sony CDU31A
8.9
Sony CDU33A
8.9
Morley
8.9
MediaVision CDR-H93MV  Yes  Yes
8.9
Computer Concepts
8.9
Pioneer  Yes  Yes
8.9
 *These drives will support Green Book video, if provided with the most
recent revision of the Panasonic firmware. This revision is not shipped
by Acorn in the Multimedia Risc PC, but is available from Cumana as an
option.
8.9

8.9
Softease
8.9
From 8.8 page 11
8.9

8.9
u Archive Special Offers u
8.9
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
8.9
Datapower Database
8.9
u After the good review which Datapower received (8.6. p43), we have
arranged a special offer price with Iota. The full price is £149 +VAT =
£175.08, the normal Archive price is £160, but it is
on special offer at £120 − an excellent saving! This was to be for
for one month, only but because the demand was so high, we have extended
the offer to two months. u
8.9
“My final choice is Datapower. Whilst I dislike the copy protection
method used (at least it is not as bad as Squirrel’s), and although it
is not a relational database, I found the lookup facility was adequate
for my needs. The design process, reporting facilities and general look
and feel of the program were such that I found myself turning more and
more to this package as the review period went by. You will not be
disappointed if you follow my example and purchase this program for your
computer. Simon Coulthurst.”
8.9
Textease
8.9
u We’ve also managed to arrange a special limited offer on Textease, the
budget DTP package. Once again, the review (see last month − page 43)
was very positive.
8.9
The full price is £39.50 but for two months, it is
on special offer at £35. u
8.9
Personal Accounts v3
8.9
u The full price of Personal Accounts is £49.95 and the special price
(for Archive subscribers only) is £35. The only difference with this
special version is that, to save costs, it will not come in a
presentation case. The offer was to be for one more month, but, again,
the demand is so high, we are extending the offer for one more month. To
take advantage of this offer, just send in your order for Personal
Accounts to NCS in the normal way but simply do so at £35 instead of
£49.95. u
8.9

8.9
Club News
8.9
The ARM Club is holding another Open Day. This takes place on Sunday,
June 11th at Belmont School, Mill Hill, London NW7. For more details,
contact Ralph Sillett on 0171-624-9918. u
8.9

8.9
Avie
8.9
From 8.8 page 17
8.9

8.9
Apricote
8.9
From 8.8 page 18
8.9

8.9
Making Movies
8.9
Mike Battersby
8.9
I work for the Kingston Schools’ IT Unit where we have recently been
involved in translating the Map Skills CD-ROM (Key Stages 2-3) from PC
to Acorn format. We have been working in conjunction with Pebbleshore
Ltd (who published the original PC version) and Cumana (well known for
their CD­ROM drives etc), who are publishing the Acorn version.
8.9
Although much of the objective was simply to translate the existing main
elements, there was also the aim to enhance the application in its Acorn
version in several ways. One of these was to add video shots of the
locations used on the CD, so that the maps used can be related to videos
(and still images) of the areas they represent, for the purpose of
developing the understanding of the maps.
8.9
Producing the videos
8.9
This then raised questions as to what equipment to use to produce the
videos. This article is not intended to be a full review of the two
alternatives tried, but is an account of our experience and choice,
based on what we were trying to achieve, and the constraints involved.
The main concerns we had were that the replay movies produced should be
of an “acceptable quality” and not require undue amounts of RAM memory
to decompress. What constitutes “acceptable” is, of course, subjective
but had to satisfy ourselves and the other two main parties involved.
Since the movies were to be silent, the audio capabilities were not an
issue.
8.9
Eagle + Eidoscope
8.9
The first system tried was the Eagle card from Computer Concepts, with
the Eidoscope software for editing. Since we were concerned with the
memory needed to decompress the movies, the only real option of formats
was the Eidos compressed format which requires just under 1Mb of RAM to
decompress. The uncompressed formats produced higher quality but require
around 2Mb of RAM free for playing via ARMovie, which was much too much.
Eidoscope is the only software available for editing the Eidos format
movies.
8.9
The results produced an acceptable quality for commercial use, but only
by a narrow margin. The pictures suffered from a narrow black strip
along the side and base of the picture, which was not too drastic but
annoying. It was desired to have a title “header” at the beginning of
each movie which, for Acorn Replay movies, is commonly referred to as
the “helpful sprite”. The Eagle card automatically puts in its own
sprite which advertises the Eagle card and Computer Concepts. Eidoscope
replaces this with its own logo! The only obvious way to put in your own
is to replace the sprite file inside either the application that
produces the movie (if it is not to be edited), or the one inside
Eidoscope. In either case the application must then be rerun each time
the sprite file is changed. The Eagle card also adds in header
information with a Computer Concepts copyright notice inside all your
own movies! This header cannot be edited in the Eidos compressed format,
though it can be edited in the uncompressed format, as alternative
editing or compression software can be used.
8.9
However, the Eagle card did produce acceptable picture quality, and
Eidoscope was quite user-friendly for editing pieces of video together,
with the particular advantage of allowing various forms of cross fades
etc, to join clips. Eidos, however, do not allow distribution of the
compression and decompression modules for commercial use without
agreement, though they can be distributed for non-commercial use. Since
the project already involved the three parties mentioned earlier, plus
Acorn (for ARMovie) and Oak Solutions (as it is a Genesis application
and required the Software Developer’s toolkit to allow commercial
distribution), we were reluctant to have yet another party involved.
8.9
Irlam 24i16 + Empire
8.9
At this time, the Irlam 24i16 digitiser card appeared on the market so
we decided to give it a try in comparison, using the Empire editing
software from Uniqueway. The card allows movies in a variety of formats
including a real time compressed format or various uncompressed ones.
The image quality was distinctly better on the majority (but not all) of
the recordings made using the same source equipment and tapes as with
the Eagle card. The uncompressed format required only marginally more
RAM to display than the Eidos compressed format, and the real time
compression format even less.
8.9
Further to this, the Irlam card allows hardware adjustment to take out
any black stripes around the edges − a considerable advantage. As
regards the helpful sprite, initially it is a copy of the first frame
but this can easily be changed by dragging an alternative sprite onto an
editing dialogue box. The written header information can also be set to
the user’s own wording from the save dialogue box.
8.9
The card can, incidentally, produce movies of varying sizes as against
the fixed Eagle size, which could be a considerable advantage, though
was not required for our purposes. It also provides more control over
colour, contrast etc, and no permission is needed to distribute the
ARMovie modules for the Irlam card.
8.9
Editing with Empire was as straightforward as with Eidoscope
(straightforward when you know how, but it takes time to suss out) and,
while the quality of each seemed about the same, my slight personal
preference is for Empire, for the way it displays strips of frames of
clips, allowing you to see a sequence of frames on screen at one time.
8.9
Conclusion
8.9
In the end, because of technical questions associated with the use of
Replay from CD-ROM, further compression/processing of the files is
likely to be necessary but the above account does at least bring to
light some of the important factors to be considered when looking at
alternatives for making Replay movies and may, hopefully, be useful to
others in a similar situation. u
8.9

8.9
Give us ’yer old Beebs & monitors
8.9
(and A310, A3000, A400, etc, etc.)
8.9
We have had an overwhelming response to our suggestion last month that
we might re-cycle old computers and peripherals for charitable purposes.
So PLEASE, if you have any old Beebs, Masters, printers, user ports,
concept keyboards (especially useful for special needs applications),
small hard drives, colour monitors, floppy drives, etc, etc just send
them in to us at NCS. Potential users include: Downs Syndrome
Associations, Mencap, Special Needs Departments in schools.
8.9
It won’t cost you much to stick them in a big box, take them along to
your local post office and send them by parcel post... we’ll get them
eventually!!! Alternatively, telephone Parcel Line, Target Express or
any other carrier who has a depot near you (see your local Yellow Pages)
and they will come and pick up the box from you for £10 or £15 or so
(especially if you say it’s for a charity scheme!).
8.9
If you are feeling really generous and have any old RISC OS computers of
any vintage that you don’t want, we can certainly find them a good home,
so just send them in to NCS.
8.9
N.B. If any of the things you send don’t work, please mark them as such
− and send them anyway because we can probably put together two duff
ones and make a working one.
8.9
Also, whether the items work or not, please mark the box “For Charity
Use” − or we might think they have come in for repair, fix them and send
them back to you with a bill for the repair costs!! u
8.9
The scheme is going well but we’ve got quite a few Beebs we can’t use
because there are no monitors... Any offers?
8.9
Catering for Crowds
8.9
(New)
8.9

8.9
Comment Column
8.9
Budget games − With so many £30+ games around which require thought, a
manual, and skill... it’s nice to be able to just load up a game and,
within seconds, be whizz-banging around the screen shooting everything
in sight. Okay, so you don’t always get the kind of graphics that come
in the big packages, but so long as it’s fun and − dare I say −
explosive, who cares? Well done to Generation Design for producing some
budget games.
8.9
My all-time favourite Beeb game was ‘Chucky Egg’ − even though my son is
still the holder of the highest score in our house! What’s your
favourite Beeb game, and does it exist for the Arc? Indeed, what’s your
favourite budget Arc game? If enough of you write in, we could set up a
fantasy league!
8.9
Gabriel Swords, Norwich
8.9
Calligraph Qume Laser Direct Interface − I took some time to get around
to buying a Risc PC for myself since I had a CC Qume Laser Direct, which
would not work on the Risc PC. I contacted CC on a couple of occasions,
but it appeared there would be no upgrade forthcoming. I finally
resigned myself to throwing the Laser Direct out, and bought a new Risc
PC from Paul.
8.9
The Qume sat in the corner of the room very neglected for a few weeks,
and I was relegated to doing all my printing at work. Then along came
Calligraph and announced a new interface that would work, not only with
their own early Laser Direct printers, but also with the CC version. It
is not cheap at £130 + VAT, but that is a lot less than buying a new
printer of comparable speed and quality.
8.9
I certainly have been pleased with the result. I can now make full use
of all the features of RISC OS 3.1+ with rotated fonts, etc. Although I
had upgraded the CC driver some time ago to what was claimed to be a
RISC OS 3.1 version, I had never managed to get it to work properly with
!Printers 1.22.
8.9
The new Calligraph driver is very fast and has a background print mode,
whereby it prints to disc first and then sends the data to the printer
in the background (it starts the actual printing very quickly; it’s just
that the data goes to disc much faster than the printer can make use of
it). Even in background mode, it still drives the printer at its rated 6
ppm, and control of the computer is regained very quickly.
8.9
The driver has a huge range of options, but I have not yet explored them
very fully, since the one thing lacking is a complete set of
instructions. I assume that the instructions come with the full printer
package. Some of the half-toning and screening options cause some very
strange effects, but it may be that these early printers cannot support
the more esoteric screen patterns. Using the standard proof settings, I
find the quality is very good, and would recommend anyone else
contemplating a similar move to go ahead. It is worth the extra
expenditure to have a fully functional laser printer again.
8.9
Chris Johnson, Edinburgh
8.9
Chess for promoting the Risc PC − In response to your request for ideas
in promoting Acorn products, there is a field in which Acorn could get a
great deal of positive publicity for a relatively small outlay. The
words Acorn and Risc PC could even be part of the average lay person’s
vocabulary. The field I am thinking of is chess! Before you stop reading
any further, hear me out!
8.9
The strength of chess programs is increasing all the time and although,
at normal match-play speed, they are not at Grand Master standard, at
speed chess they are very strong and are able to match and even beat the
best human chess players in the world. In August 1994, the unthinkable
happened; an £89 chess program called ‘Genius 3’, running on a Pentium
90 PC, beat Garry Kasparov, the human World Chess Champion, in the INTEL
Speed Chess Grand Prix! The names Intel and Pentium got massive
publicity in the next day’s press − a master-stroke by Intel! I was
asked by ‘non-computer literate’ friends what this ‘Pentium’ thing was
that had beaten the World Champion!
8.9
If a strong chess program, running on an Acorn RISC machine, did well in
chess competitions against human and Pentium opposition, people would
sit up and take notice. No need for software comparisons on different
platforms − we would beat them head on in direct competition!
8.9
As a keen club player, I have eagerly waited for a strong Acorn chess
program to appear and have conducted competitions between programs to
find the best. The results may surprise you. The best Acorn program
appears to be Colossus 4, running on my trusty old BBC B, which beat
Cyber Chess running on an A410/1! However, Colossus 4 is weak compared
to even the average chess program running on an IBM type PC.
8.9
“So where are we going to get a strong chess program from?” I hear you
say, but here too I have an answer! In the field of dedicated chess
computers (i.e. those that come complete with processor, board and
pieces) the most powerful in the world is the TASC R30 and, yes, you’ve
guessed it − it contains an ARM processor! (Incidently, three of the top
five dedicated chess computers use ARM processors.) Now it surely can’t
be too difficult to transport the code across to an Acorn RISC computer
and bingo − a world beater! Then let’s beat the opposition head on in
competition!
8.9
Rob Pollard, Guisborough
8.9
Chess II − Regarding the review of Chess II in the May edition of
Archive, although David Pilling has done an admirable job, at a
remarkable price, from my own and my son’s viewpoints (club player and
county player, respectively), we were disappointed with the review, for
two main reasons.
8.9
Firstly, a potential purchaser cannot tell how strong the program is
from the review. The statement “I think the game plays more strongly
than ever” is not good enough. As with any review, comparison tests
should have been carried out; Chess II should have been made to play
Chess, Cyber Chess and PC chess programs before its strength could be
truly assessed. I have played Chess against Fritz 2 (a strong PC
program, but by no means the strongest) several times and Fritz 2 beats
Chess easily. Chess II would have to be a lot stronger than Chess to
compete at the same level.
8.9
The world of computer chess is big business − there are magazines which
are devoted to assessing the strengths of the various programs and of
dedicated chess computers, containing league tables (which, needless to
say, don’t contain any Acorn programs), with programmers vying for the
number one spot. Even IBM has its own dedicated chess computer, aptly
named ‘Deep Blue’.
8.9
Secondly, to say the program is “fully recommended for novice,
enthusiast and pro” by Tord, who freely admits to being beaten by it on
novice and beginner level, is a rather sweeping statement. Enthusiasts
and pros expect a lot from their chess programs to help improve their
game. Strength aside, many other important features are usually standard
in PC chess programs, such as an extensive and editable opening book,
database of games sorted by player and opening type, move evaluation and
best line display, post game analysis, etc. Cyber Chess had some of
these features, but lacked the playing strength.
8.9
As I stated in my original letter (see above), the best dedicated chess
computers in the world use ARM processors, so transferring the code to
an Acorn machine would seem to be our best hope of producing a world
beater.
8.9
Rob Pollard, Guisborough
8.9
Tord replies...
8.9
I agree that it would be good to compare Chess II with PC or Mac
programs but (a) this is an Acorn magazine and (b) I only own an Acorn
computer. Being overseas and unemployed doesn’t help, so if anyone would
like to send me computers and chess programs to test, I’ll accept them
willingly!
8.9
I have done some testing against Chess, but Chess3D and Battle Chess are
not multitasking and so, with only one computer, I can’t pit them
against each other. For the earlier review, I set Chess against Colossus
4 on an Amstrad CP/M machine. This was a walk-over for Chess at almost
any level, so I am amazed to hear Rob’s conclusion that his ‘best’ chess
game is Colossus 4 on a Beeb.
8.9
I stand by my review of Chess II. Many better chess players than me
approved of Chess, and Chess II is a considerable improvement in many
ways, and it’s certainly well worth the money.
8.9
If Rob can afford a Risc PC plus a PC with Fritz 2 which, most likely,
costs more than two copies of Chess II, I am sure he can afford a copy
of Chess II as well. Rob, why not risk(!) a few quid and try out Chess
II for yourself?!
8.9
Tord Eriksson, Sweden
8.9
Clan Acorn Column − Would anyone be interested in editing a Clan Acorn
Column? The idea would be that, as editor, you could be in close contact
with Chris Cox, Acorn’s Enthusiasts Sales and Marketing Manager, and
keep Archive readers informed about what is happening in the way of
enthusiasts seminars, etc. You could also keep an eye on the
comp.sys.acorn group and feed things out of there into the Column.
8.9
Also, Chris gave a very good briefing to the press about his (Acorn’s)
vision for what could be achieved by Acorn enthusiasts in the way of
promoting Acorn’s products and guiding Acorn’s future development. It
would be good to share some of these ideas with the Archive readership,
but sadly, being so short-staffed, I only have time to edit the magazine
and not to write articles.
8.9
The diagram below is an illustration of how Chris sees the enthusiasts
at the leading edge of the market and how, by two-way communication,
they could influence the future development of Acorn’s technology − a
very bold concept which I very much doubt would ever be used by any
other computer company. Can you imagine IBM actually telling people some
of their development plans and asking them for their opinions of where
they should be going in the future?!
8.9
I believe that it IS worth sticking with Acorn, it IS extremely
interesting and exciting (albeit also very frustrating at times!) and I
for one won’t be deserting Acorn yet a while. Actually, editing Simon
Coulthurst’s RiscDOS Column this month made me extremely glad that I
don’t have to be “industry standard”! I couldn’t believe all the
technicalities he had to get into with Windows and networking.
8.9
Ed.
8.9
Database exchange scheme − There must be many Archive readers who have
databases of interesting facts and figures created with various database
applications. How about sharing your databases with other members? Paul
has suggested that I run the database exchange scheme, which I would be
willing to undertake.
8.9
If you have any databases that you would like to share with other
Archive members, please take the following action:
8.9
Send me your files as saved by your database application. Also send me
CSV files of the same data. Make sure that every disc you send me has
your name and address firmly attached and the name of the database
application that was used to create the files. Please send me, as well,
25 pence in coins and a return address label for the return of your
disc. If more than one disc is being sent, please add the extra postage.
(Please do not send me stamps for the return of your discs.)
8.9
After a pause of three or four weeks, while waiting for your database
material to arrive, your disc(s) will be returned to you with a list of
all of the database files received to date. You may then return the list
with your chosen databases marked on it, with blank, formatted disc(s).
8.9
It should be pointed out at this stage that one or two commercial
database applications available for the Archimedes computers (e.g.
Squirrel), allow the use of multi-line text fields. If your particular
database application does not have this type of field available, you
will not be able to import CSVfiles into your database without serious
loss of data. If you are sending databases with multi-line text fields,
please mark this fact on the disc. You may also send me any interesting
databases created with PC database software, as long as they are sent in
CSV format.
8.9
The databases will be distributed free of any charge, and the supplier
of each database will remain anonymous, if so desired. Any inquiries for
database material must always be accompanied by 25 pence in coins and a
return address label.
8.9
Roger King, Malgré-Tout, Ruette des Corneilles, Cobo, Guernsey, GY5 7HG
8.9
EasyFont3 − When using !EasyFont3, I am experiencing problems when
trying to import a font from my hard disc. I am getting error messages
relating to memory, both on disc and in the module area. The font
directories on my hard disc are archived using !ArcFS2 − version 2.52.
By copying the font folder(s) from the archived directory to a temporary
unarchived directory and then importing them into !EasyFont3, the
problem disappears. Fabis Computing have been told about this and I am
advising the programmer of !ArcFS2 of the details. There appears to be a
clash of memory requirements here − far beyond my capabilities to
understand.
8.9
Ted Lacey, Southampton
8.9
Educational jargon − Ed asked last month for something to help him with
educational jargon. Well, through the Home and School Council, I have
edited a booklet about educational jargon which will perhaps help. It is
entitled “What does it mean?”, is written by Barbara Bullivant and
Elizabeth Wallis, and costs £2 from the Home and School Council, 40
Sunningdale Mount, Ecclesall, Sheffield, S11 9HA.
8.9
Christopher Jarman, Winchester
8.9
Christopher, thanks for the copy of “What does it mean?”. It has
enlightened me about certain things, such as SATs (Standard Assessment
Tests) which are “national tests at 7, 11 and 14 to ascertain the level
of attainment reached by pupils at Key Stages (q.v.) of the National
Curriculum (q.v.)”. I now also know that “Sin Bin” is the “name
sometimes applied to a Unit for disruptive pupils”!  Thanks.
8.9
Audrey Laski and Richard Rymarz have also responded to the plea. They
sent text on disc of their own little glossaries of educational terms. I
have put these on the monthly program disc. Thanks to you, too. Ed.
8.9
The following letter was sent by Brian Kerslake to Computer Retail News
− well done Brian − and I thought you’d like to read what he has to say.
Ed.
8.9
Educational software is alive and well. It just doesn’t get the support
it deserves.
8.9
I read Jack Schofield’s ‘Edutainment goes by the bored’ (Computer Retail
News, 15 Feb 95) with some empathy and just as much disquiet.
8.9
He’s right when he says that ‘children have an amazing capacity to
learn’. As an ex-teacher, now running an award-winning educational
software house, I’d add ‘given good learning materials’ − which is what
the real edsoft industry in the UK (not the Big Publishers like
Microsoft) provides. Uniquely, it is still populated by educators who
are all responsible enough to push only an appropriate selection of
products towards parents. The trouble is, these aren’t the ones that the
trade wants to stock.
8.9
Jack says that the personal computer can overcome lack of motivation by
‘converting almost anything into a game’. Well, that might be what’s
supposed to happen, but I might disagree on the definition of a game. Is
that really the kind of software to lead us into the next century?
What’s in the shops right now reflects pretty well the sort of stuff
that was on sale back in the early eighties when those BP’s last moved
in. ‘Pick a skill, wrap it up in a game like space invaders, and it’ll
sell,’ thought the likes of Mirrorsoft. Well where are they now?
8.9
If we’re not careful, the wheel will go full circle. Will jittery
videoclips, tacked on animations and oodles of dull hypertext make CD a
winner? Probably. Discs will get bought (or bundled) but, as Jack says,
the important question is will parents come back for more? My guess is
they won’t. Too many titles suffer from poor design, and the platform
they run on: most PCs really are sluggish beasts.
8.9
In Jack’s article, there was precious little mention of the very real
success that British educational software houses are having worldwide.
Perhaps this is because many of us have deliberately restricted most of
our development activities to Acorn’s amazing machines. That’s right,
Acorn, a British company which has been selling, internationally,
powerful multitasking RISC-based machines since the late eighties and
long before Apple ever took the risk. If you think multimedia on a PC is
something special, try it on Acorn’s new Risc PC that you’ll find in a
growing number of British schools. Quietly matching their success are
the comparatively small UK edsoft houses who grow by mail order and
word-of-mouth repeat business. Repeat, business − which we’re still in,
despite poor retail support.
8.9
But things are changing. Some schools are now going the PC route,
because ‘these are the systems that kids will meet when they leave
school’. I beg to differ − by the time the present generation leave
school, the rest of the world might just have caught up. Unfortunately,
we can’t stand still and wait for Acorn to sell its superb machines into
homes and businesses in the manner they deserve. Most of us are porting
appropriate (that word again) software onto PC-‘compatibles’. Now we can
offer kids the chance to use successful school software at home.
8.9
So there will soon be a lot of proven high-quality educational PC
software around. Betsi (4Mation) − an interactive adventure set in Tudor
times − was enormously popular in its Acorn incarnation at the recent
Interactive Shakespeare Show at London’s Barbican Centre, and is now
available on the PC. The Acorn version of Music Box (Topologika) was
awarded Britain’s premier software award at BETT ’95; it too is now
available on the PC. And there’s plenty more coming ...
8.9
But will parents be able to find these educationally stimulating
programs in the shops, or will the trade instead go for the quick buck,
just like it did in the eighties? Its in your hands. I’m just sitting
here watching the wheels go round and round...
8.9
Brian Kerslake, Topologika
8.9
Font Competition − Unfortunately, there was only one entry in our font
competition and so the choice of prizes goes to Mrs. A.M.W. Demarteau-
v.d.Moosdijk in Best, Netherlands for her Nigra font which contains 153
characters. Congratulations Mrs Demarteau for a very stylish font.
8.9
Christopher Jarman, Winchester
8.9
Foreign characters − I’ve at last found a more satisfying solution,
quicker than using the default Alt keys, as described in the Acorn A4000
Welcome Guide, p.41 or the !Chars utility. You can use your <alt> and/or
<ctrl> keys together with the vowels which you wish accented, in
conjunction with two utilities called ‘!IntKey’ and ‘!Accents’.
8.9
Double click on the !IntKey application, which can be found on the RISC
OS 3 support disc. Load W.D.Hine’s !Accents utility (found on the tools,
‘Nice Disc’ from Evolution Computers). Choose the language on the menu
of !Accents from the iconbar menu. The keyboard will now obey the key
combinations as shown, if you click on Accents on the iconbar.
Unfortunately, you cannot restore the default <alt> key values by
choosing the default option in the menu of !Accents. You will need to do
a hard reset, or enter the following commands
8.9
RMKill InternationalKeyboard
8.9
RMReinit InternationalKeyboard
8.9
Valdo Richard, Switzerland
8.9
Iiyama’s good service − I recently bought a Risc PC and a 17“ Idek
Iiyama monitor from NCS (who helped me overcome initial teething
problems − thanks). Although the picture was beautifully sharp, there
seemed to be a degree of bending of vertical lines, particularly
noticeable on one side of the screen. No amount of fiddling the controls
would remove it so, at NCS’ suggestion, I rang Iiyama direct and was
given a very understandable explanation of why a certain amount of
distortion of vertical lines was inevitable, due to the attempt to
‘square’ the screen.
8.9
I was also offered the option of returning the monitor to Iiyama at any
time during the first 30 days for a replacement or a full refund (via
the supplier). I haven’t decided on my course of action yet but am going
to try to compare with a number of similar-sized monitors at work first.
Iiyama’s attitude is commendable and has certainly put my mind at rest.
8.9
Peter Smith, Whaley Bridge
8.9
Internet − After last month’s comments, can I also point out that
Compuserve offers a good connection to the ’net as I found out by
reading an old Archive review of !Arctic by Richard Proctor (7.2 p55).
(I’ve sent the demo version to Paul for the monthly disc.) The advantage
of the system is that the software is very good, is Risc PC tested, and
Richard is planning on expanding it as Compuserve expands its Internet
capability. (He is writing a Usenet application specifically for
Compuserve.)
8.9
For those of us remote from big towns, phone bills are minimised by log
on/grab/log off. It costs me about £7 a month and there is a very active
Acorn group on UK Computing Forum section 8. Whilst it is very American
in flavour, it has allowed me to send small articles to the Citroen Car
Club mag in Wellington via the Internet and Apple’s dealer system and
the cheap e-mail is invaluable! To join ring 0800-289378 (+44-272-
760681).
8.9
Ned Abell, Kidderminster. [e-mail]
8.9
Internet access − Following my comments last month, Nick Smith from ANT
Ltd pointed out a couple of errors in what I had written.
8.9
Firstly, the maximum serial port rate on pre-A5000 machines is
technically 19200 baud. That is true, but, when working through RISC OS,
connections may not be totally reliable, which is why I gave the 9600
figure. He does think that a 28800 modem is a good investment, although
14400 is perfectly good, for a few quid less.
8.9
A5000 or later machines can drive the serial port at 57600 baud,
although this can only be used by accessing the hardware directly. Risc
PCs can drive the serial port at 115200 baud, making a 28800 modem more
attractive.
8.9
Matthew Hunter, NCS
8.9
PC compatibility − I concur with Anthony Hilton’s comments (8.8 p50)
that software houses should concentrate on providing PC compatibility,
though I think a separate multifunction utility to convert between Acorn
and the desired PC software format would be more practical. The problem
with providing PC compatibility within an Acorn product is that PC
software manufacturers seem to revise the file formats each time they
‘upgrade’ (?) their software. Since their systems are revised every 12-
24 months, it would probably be more effective if the conversion were
handled by a separate utility which could be upgraded as frequently as
necessary.
8.9
To put my money where my mouth is, and reinforce a comment in Keith
Hodge’s column (8.6 p69), I would have preferred to invest £80-90 in
such a piece of conversion software rather than buy a PC card! Having
heard, from some of the privileged few who are owners of the first
Risc PC PC cards, that 12-16Mb of memory is the minimum needed to run
both Windows 3.1 and RISC OS simultaneously, I am even more convinced of
the efficacy of the software approach. I have a 10Mb (8+2) Risc PC and
the further investment of £145 for a memory upgrade makes the PC card
very expensive, i.e. £116 PC Card, £60 approx. for Windows 3.1, £145
memory upgrade, total £321, assuming you have an ABC 45 (even more if
you’re starting with a lower-memory Risc PC) and that’s before you buy a
copy of your chosen software.
8.9
I would be interested in comments from software houses as to why they
have not attempted to provide some sort of basic compatibility with PC
software. Having said this, I understand that the Eureka 3 spreadsheet
does import and export spreadsheets from various flavours of Lotus 123,
(almost a ‘standard’ spreadsheet interchange format), and Excel (though
only up to Version 4). If this supported Excel 5, I would be the first
in the queue for a copy. As an aside, on PC platforms, the DBase format
appears to be a ‘standard’ exchange format for databases,while Lotus 123
for spreadsheets, though lamentably ASCII, is still the only reliable
text exchange format, and as for graphics formats... !
8.9
Ashoke Patel, Ilford
8.9
Risc PC genlock − Millipede Electronic Graphics demonstrated an
AlphaLock genlock overlay adaptor for the Risc PC at the Acorn World
Show and soon will release the product in two versions, at a price of
around £750 +VAT. I mention this because this might be the first genlock
for the computer, and the demonstration I saw was to the highest
standard. The two versions will be ready in “about six weeks” (which
would be about the end of May) and the demonstration boards are being
sent to both Lindis and Clares for evaluation with their !CableNews2 and
!Titler software. I only wish Paul Reuvers and Rob Davidson would get
together to program a joint effort!!!
8.9
The two boards will be a PAL/NTSC composite and S-Video board with
linear keying mixer and a board that is component video without the
mixer.
8.9
I’ll review the product as soon as I’ve bought it!!
8.9
Ned Abell, Kidderminster. [e-mail]
8.9
STDFinder improved − In order to get v2.01 of !STDFinder onto the
monthly disc in time for PhoneDay (Archive 8.8 p67), it went out with a
known limitation. This has now been cleared in v2.02 which is included
on this month’s disc. In addition, thanks to the efforts of Mr Frank
Peddie, two extra files are added to the ‘Directorys’ folder. These are
the modified international codes and London sub-codes, including Mercury
numbers.
8.9
Once !STDFinder has been loaded, dragging a new data file to the icon
bar opens an option window, allowing the new data to replace or be
merged with the existing Newcodes data. If desired, the result may be
saved for future use. If all data files are merged, there are some 6,700
lines of data (!) but processing is still near-instantaneous.
8.9
As far as I know, and thanks to the work of Julyan Bristow, Ted Lacey
and Frank Peddie, !STDFinder is the only utility which not only has all
the post-PhoneDay codes, but also the majority of other recent BT
changes, typically brought about by the installation of digital
exchanges. If you don’t get the monthly disc but would like a copy of
!STDFinder, it is available from The Datafile PD library or,
alternatively, from me on receipt of a formatted disc and return
postage.
8.9
Jim Nottingham, 16 Westfield Close, Pocklington, York, YO4 2EY
8.9
TableMate 2 − As a regular user and big fan of TableMate 2, I entirely
endorse Dave Floyd’s very positive review in Archive 8.8 p73 and his
wish-list for justified text and simple spreadsheet functions. The
latter would be very useful as, presently, although it is easy to
prepare data in a spreadsheet or database and import it to TableMate,
were we to modify and reimport the data, it would then be necessary to
re-apply all the TableMate styles such as column widths, font names/
sizes, colours, etc.
8.9
In dealing with another problem recently, I fell upon an undocumented
workaround procedure which enables the majority of the basic style
information to be retained. Having got a complex table just as I wanted
it, I found that if all the cell data was highlighted and deleted, the
basic table layout was retained. This included parameters such as
rulers, tabs, column widths, joined columns, line widths, metrics and so
on. I was then able to save this ‘blank’ table for future use as a
template. This allows me to modify the original data within a
spreadsheet and re-import it directly into the TableMate template,
leaving me to re-apply only a limited amount of style data. Saving the
template takes only a few moments and can save much fiddling later on.
8.9
This unexpected bonus surfaced while helping to solve a problem for
Peter Bond. He had produced a complex table, and subsequently wanted to
apply major modifications. This proved to be near-impossible because,
although data can be typed in manually, or imported in CSV, TSV or SID
formats, it cannot then be exported in these same formats for major
modification in, say, a spreadsheet. However, between us, we discovered
it was feasible to export the data in DDF format, load the result into
!Edit, filter out all the TableMate ‘scribble’, massage the data type
into the desired format (e.g. CSV) and export it to a spreadsheet or
wherever. This was a one-off procedure as, having done it, Peter was
then able to modify the data, whenever required, and re-import it into a
blank table template as described above. It follows that, if there is
any likelihood you will need to modify tabulated data at any point, it
would be better to do this in a spreadsheet or database and export it to
TableMate, rather than entering the data directly.
8.9
If anyone has data ‘stuck’ inside a table and would like to export it
for modification, please send me a copy of the table on disc and a note
of which output format you require (CSV or TSV).
8.9
Jim Nottingham, 16 Westfield Close, Pocklington, York, YO4 2EY
8.9
Word processing on Acorn and PCs − This comment is prompted by John
Molyneux’s comment in the May edition of Archive (p46), but it is not
about his problem, which I would guess is fairly specialised. It is
rather that the whole tone of his remarks about, in this case,
WordPerfect (and his ‘amusing’ deformations of the name) is very common
among Acorn users, and it does us no good at all. Quite apart from
sounding like the whinging of an oppressed minority, it completely
overlooks the point that the relationship of WordPerfect or Word, to any
WP or even DTP program on Acorn is, in many respects, that of a Massey-
Fergusson tractor to a pedal-car.
8.9
I should say right away that I have been an Acorn enthusiast ever since
I got a BBC B − then an Archimedes 440 (still going strong with
PipeDream 4) and now the Risc PC, which beats any PC in all sorts of
ways, except for word-processing. Things which you take for granted in
WordPerfect simply don’t exist in, for example, Fireworkz or, from what
I read, the main Acorn DTP packages either. This does not mean to say
that Fireworkz may not be better than WordPerfect for many things (such
as variable-format tables or importing spreadsheet data or graphics,
though even these can be done in WordPerfect), if you need to use a
computer mainly for writing reports and other documents, and for editing
in a mix of French, German and English. So the lack of some essential
facilities means that I am stuck with the PC, even though I would much
rather use the Acorn side of the Risc PC.
8.9
What are these essentials for a report-writer? In the following list,
the top two are the real sine qua non, though the others can be very
useful.
8.9
1. Automatic paragraph numbering (as used here). In WordPerfect, I can
use one of four pre-defined styles down to eight levels each, or define
my own style. If you are constantly shifting, inserting and deleting
paras, you really can’t do without this.
8.9
2. Footnotes and/or Endnotes. I don’t use these so much, but in certain
documents they are essential. For example, in any sort of research, and
when I am preparing notes for a talk, I often use both.
8.9
3. Undo and Undelete (the latter to three levels) − very useful for
quick moving of text. (This is not the same as cut-and-paste.)
8.9
4. The ability to see what codes you are using and where precisely they
are located in the text, as in WordPerfect’s “Show codes”. I have tried
to correct a phrase in Fireworkz like “Archive amgazine” and kept ending
up with “Archive magazine” because Fireworkz wouldn’t let me place the
cursor between the end of the italic and the start of the second word.
WordPerfect does let you do this, but “Show codes” makes doubly sure.
8.9
5. Load from / Save to different WP formats. I know that, in Fireworkz,
you are meant to be able to use Rich Text Format, but this doesn’t seem
to work. From Fireworkz to WordPerfect, you get a blank screen, though
the text is definitely on the file, and from WordPerfect to Fireworkz,
you get the most peculiar results:− italic and bold not closed off, hard
returns and first words after them deleted, auto-para numbers translated
as underline, etc. I think that this is partly WordPerfect’s fault. RTF
is just not a very good translation but it lists nine other WP formats,
all in several versions, plus ANSI or ASCII text in various guises, and
these do work. When you’re dealing with a good number of authors, as I
am, this is essential if you are to read their discs.
8.9
6. User-definable F-keys and keyboard. This can be done in both
PipeDream 4 and (with greater ease) WordPerfect. In the latter, you can
have up to 72 commands, out of a vast number available on F-keys, with
one keystroke each (counting <shift-F1>, etc as one stroke), and you can
re-define the whole keyboard in as many versions as you want, as I have
for foreign characters. If you are a frequent user, keystrokes are much
quicker than using the mouse.
8.9
7. A much greater range of foreign, mathematical and other characters,
insertable straight into any text, without altering the font you are
working in, though you can easily do that also in WordPerfect without
having to use ‘styles’, which I find pretty cumbersome.
8.9
8. User-definable button-bars. This may be possible in Fireworkz − it is
very useful for common commands you don’t want on your F-keys.
8.9
9. Drag-and-drop a marked section for copy/move within the text − much
faster than cut-and-paste.
8.9
10. Indent or double-indent all lines of a para until the next hard
return. This is not the same as Tab, which only indents the first line.
I think this can be done in Fireworkz, but with one keystroke?
8.9
11. Add comments to the text which are visible on the screen but which
do not print out − very useful for reminders, for REMs à la Basic, etc.
8.9
There are, I suspect, a good number of other things which WordPerfect
can do which Acorn WPs cannot but these are the ones I use frequently. I
am sure that one day Fireworkz Pro et al. will include many of these
functions but, until they do, let us not slag off WPs which have them
already.
8.9
This comment was, of course, typed in WordPerfect and sent to Archive as
hard copy + an Acorn disc with a plain text version (losing all
highlighting and special characters) and an RTF version (see para 5
above!).
8.9
Christopher Wightwick, London
8.9
Here is a brief and hurried reply from John...
8.9
If Christopher has been offended by my mention of any particular
program, I apologise. I intended the ‘humorous’ names to be taken
lightly. However, he seems to have missed the point of my original
letter. The message was that file transfer on PCs is fraught with
incompatibility problems. If he thinks that this is the whinging of a
minority, he should hear some of the comments that fly around the office
when transferring graphics between IBMs.
8.9
I was amused at the thought of WordPerfect as a tractor − to my way of
thinking, it’s a slow lumbering tractor! My wife, her secretary and some
of my colleagues (all of whom don’t use anything other than IBMs) have
all abandoned version 6 of WordPerfect for the increased speed of 5.2.
8.9
I can’t comment about Fireworkz, but the two essential attributes for
Christopher’s type of report seem to be paragraph numbering and
footnotes. The first is a technique I wouldn’t personally use except in
a very rudimentary sense in my technical reports − can anyone really
need eight levels?  “For further details, see section
1.6.2.1.5.iv.a.ii”?
8.9
As to his second and subsequent points, Publisher, which I regularly use
for text work, can do most of what he intimates is missing. Why would
you want to edit style codes? With WYSIWYG, you can see where they
change. Publisher can also import many foreign file types with ease.
8.9
P.S. This was written on a Pocket Book whilst walking the dogs, because
Paul only gave me two days’ notice to compose and return a reply!
8.9
John  Molyneux, Runcorn
8.9

8.9
Writing Your Own Book
8.9
Philip Woodward
8.9
Preparing material for a proper book publisher may seem a far cry from
DIY desktop publishing, but the two activities have much in common,
because work is more acceptable when presented tidily, whether addressed
to a publisher or directly to the public. I have just finished a semi-
popular book entitled ‘My Own Right Time’, for publication by Oxford
University Press in July, and I thought Archive readers might be
interested to know how I set about all the writing and drawing with an
A5000 using TechWriter, Draw and Hatchback.
8.9
The text
8.9
After much thought, I chose to prepare the text using TechWriter, mainly
because it copes wonderfully with equations, printing minus signs as
proper minuses, not as hyphens, and spacing things in a thoroughly
professional manner. I had already bought Desktop Publishing on the
Archimedes by Bruce Goatly, an informative and sensible book which
enabled me to appreciate for the first time the real difference between
word processing and desktop publishing. Although only twelve pages of
this book are devoted to EasiWriter (upon which TechWriter is based),
those twelve pages were invaluable in overcoming the initial hurdles.
Bruce Goatly spoke to me in my own language rather than that of the
manuals.
8.9
I did all my numerous drawings with Draw, without which I could not have
written the book at all. For my own convenience, I decided to embed the
drawings in the text, in spite of the fact that all such placings would
eventually be discarded if the book were accepted for publication. The
publishing house would start again from the raw material and impose its
own house style. However, I happen to know that the way I had presented
the material did create a favourable impression (with a small ‘i’). The
combination of Draw and TechWriter proved a happy partnership, as
TechWriter has the facility named Object Linking and Embedding (OLE),
which enables one application to be called from within another. Double
click on a drawing in the text, and the uncropped original pops up with
the Draw toolbox alongside. Saving puts the revised drawing back into
the text.
8.9
Not being strictly a DTP package, TechWriter structures the text rather
than the page. A picture – along with its caption – cannot be set in a
fixed position on the page. It counts as a paragraph of the text.
Consequently, after a heavy edit, a blank can occur when a picture is
too big for the amount of space left on the page. This I am quite happy
to correct by drag-and-drop editing.
8.9
Although TechWriter will align the text at left and right-hand edges if
wished, I chose to have the right-hand edges ragged (as in Archive,
since the May issue), and to mark paragraphs by extra line spacing
rather than by indents (also as Archive). The payoff with TechWriter is
the possibility of inserting a picture within a paragraph, or appearing
to do so. You simply take a new paragraph at the end of a line in mid-
sentence, and there insert the diagram. The reader is unaware that a new
paragraph has been taken. This subterfuge does not work with fully
justified text because the line immediately before the picture cannot be
made to stretch to the margin. With care, it is possible to go further
and make text flow round the side of a diagram by writing it as a side-
caption, but except for the purpose of showing off, I have found this
much too troublesome. Wisely, TechWriter makes no claim to any such
facility.
8.9
Shading the illustrations
8.9
As may easily be imagined, some drawings of clockwork mechanisms can be
made clearer by shading, which is where Hatchback came in so useful.
Hatchback will replace any coloured area in a Draw picture with black-
and-white hatching suitable for monochrome printing. Many patterns are
possible, but all those in Hatchback are based on parallel lines, grids
of lines (cross hatching) or circular dots. At first, I thought I wanted
the dots, but at high density, their generation is extremely slow, so I
never use them. There is a simple answer, surprisingly never mentioned
in 4Mation’s otherwise excellent little manual. All you do is choose a
diagonal cross-hatching with black and white reversed. Hey presto, you
have an array of little square black dots, whose frequency and density
can be adjusted to give the appearance of any desired shade of grey.
Advice from the publisher is needed to ascertain a safe frequency for
this dot pattern to survive the printing process.
8.9
To the printers...
8.9
Once a book has been accepted by a publisher, and a quantity of
champagne drunk (not squirted into the computer), we have a problem. The
first book I ever wrote, more than forty years ago, was sent to the
printer in my very own handwriting, and the compositor was happy to work
straight from that. Nowadays, it is becoming the norm to submit material
on disc, which is where problems start. Would a TechWriter file be
acceptable? (This was TechWriter version 2.01, not the new TechWriter
Professional which offers output in a portable TeX format.) Guessing
not, I prepared a plain ASCII file for each chapter on a DOS-formatted
disc.
8.9
Then, helped by a friend with an IBM-compatible PC, I discovered that
characters in the range 128–159 are by no means standardized. All the
characters on the keyboard are safe, as are those needed for French
quotations, but not such simple essentials as inverted commas and
dashes. For instance, a single inverted comma is character 144 in Acorn
fonts, but 145 in Times New Roman for a PC/Deskjet combination. Taking a
leaf from Goatly’s book, I encoded all my single opening quotes as
double primes ( “ ) and all my single closing quotes as single primes (
‘ ). This enables the desired text to be reconstructed by editing,
apostrophes and all. Conversational dashes (en-rules) I encoded as a
pair of hyphens ( — ). All highlights were lost, as were mathematical
equations, so these would have to be edited in from the printed copy.
8.9
Confronted with this somewhat primitive disc, OUP requested the Acorn
disc I had actually used, but my original guess proved to be correct.
They went for the DOS disc with the ASCII text. There is no denying that
we in the Acorn world are out on a limb when it comes to communication.
Will the Risc PC solve such problems – other than by capitulation?
8.9
Presenting the drawings
8.9
As for drawings, I chose to provide all my artwork on paper, as printed
by my Bubblejet printer. At 2.5 times larger than final size, there was
little trace of moire patterns between the Hatchback dots and the pixels
of the BJ-10. The first thing OUP did was to scan these drawings into
their own computers, which left me wondering whether I should have
offered everything in PostScript. The Oxford University Press are so
courteous and adaptable that I did not feel like asking gratuitous
questions!
8.9
Not all the illustrations in my book are drawings. Some are computed
graphs captured as sprites. In mode 29, with a resolution of 800×600,
the lines are too spidery for good clear book illustrations, but a lower
resolution mode shows the pixels up too clearly and loses information.
To overcome this difficulty, my trick is to paint the screen four times
over, sometimes by choosing four different origins, e.g. ORIGIN 500,
500: PROCplot: ORIGIN 502,500: PROCplot: ORIGIN 500, 502: PROCplot:
ORIGIN 502, 502: PROCplot. Another method, using a single origin,
involves drawing each part of the graph four times over. My own graph-
plotting package includes this as an option. The resulting bold lines
with fine pixels is just what I want, but surely somebody has a labour-
saving program which will replace each pixel in a bitmap by a cluster of
four in a square? The software supplied by Computer Concepts with
Scanlight256 carries out similar manipulations, but I have not yet
succeeded in making it do just what I have described. Can anyone oblige?
8.9
I hope this has given a bit of an insight into what might be involved in
producing a book for a publisher using Acorn computers and software. If
anyone has any further experience, ideas, suggestions, etc, please write
in and let us know. u
8.9

8.9
My Own Right Time
8.9
An exploration of clockwork design by Philip Woodward, Silver Medallist
of the British Horological Institute, to be published in hardback this
July by Oxford University Press.
8.9
ISBN 0198-565-224
8.9
Describes in simple language the scientific problems of precision
timekeeping in the age of the pendulum, with a whole chapter on computer
simulation of clock performance.
8.9
This is ‘an important and scholarly work which will prove to be a
landmark in our horological literature’
8.9
Jonathan Betts, Curator of Horology at Greenwich.
8.9
The Talking Animated Alphabet
8.9
Richard Rymarz
8.9
The Talking Animated Alphabet adds significantly to the ever-growing
library of programs specifically designed for pre-school children and
early learners at Key Stage 1 (5-7 year olds). Written and produced by
Sherston Software, this program tackles the three basic skills of letter
recognition, visual letter discrimination and aural letter
discrimination. Presented on four 800Kb discs, the program is easily
loaded onto hard disc, with the usual key disc used as protection.
8.9
The programs
8.9
Clicking on !Alphabet installs the program on the icon bar, and a
further click fills the screen with the opening page, offering the
following:
8.9
u Visual letter discrimination
8.9
The aim of this activity is to ensure that the child can distinguish
between the shapes of the letters. It is suggested (mainly for the
parent rather than teacher) that the child first learns to recognise the
difference between simple shapes such as squares, triangles, circles,
etc. Knowing the names is not essential − just being able to match the
shapes is. Once this is mastered, the child can move on to Talking
Animated Alphabet.
8.9
The control screen (activated at any time by pressing <ctrl-T>) in very
comprehensive. There are three levels of difficulty since some letters
are more difficult to recognise that others. Further, the teacher/parent
can customise the letter groups to provide very individual programmes of
learning. Finally, the number of tries can be set. Click on OK and the
activity springs to life with a beautifully designed screen: a marbled
backdrop with decorated balloons in the corners and the appropriate
letter-shapes scattered around. The target letter is boxed and a huge
mouth appears in the right hand corner. A very clear voice tells the
children the task. The child then has to click on the appropriate
letter. If there is a delay, he/she is asked again; if wrong then a,
‘No! look again!’ is heard. Three wrong guesses and a polite, ‘No! Never
mind. Try this one.’ leads the child onto another letter. Once the
letter is correctly chosen, it zooms to a larger scale, the voice says,
‘Well done, that’s right.’, the other letters disappear and two circular
arrows invite the children to ‘morph’ the letter. Thus an ‘e’ turns into
an elephant, an ‘l’ into a lighthouse, and so on. The next letter is
then presented.
8.9
u Aural letter discrimination
8.9
The aim of this activity is to ensure that a child can distinguish
between the sounds of letters. This takes the form of an ‘I Spy’ game
where the children listen to the spoken sound and then click on the
appropriate picture. Clicking on the picture morphs it to a letter. Thus
an apple becomes an ‘a’, a jack-in-the-box becomes a ‘j’ and so on. The
control screen allows the level of difficulty, the number of tries, etc,
to be set.
8.9
u Letter recognition
8.9
The aim of this activity is to link the shape of each letter with its
phonetic sound. It is suggested that only a few letters are used at
first, gradually adding more as the child gains confidence. The picture
opens the activity, which is then morphed into the letter. A spoken
instruction asks the child to, “Find the letter that says ‘g’,” for
example. Clicking on the correct letter provokes the response, “Yes!
This letter says ‘g’.” Three mistakes and another letter is offered. A
simpler activity involves the morphing element only. All the expected
options are available from the control screen.
8.9
The package
8.9
The Talking Animated Alphabet comes in the usual Sherston plastic wallet
which now, thankfully, has a separate pocket for each disc. The
excellent user guide skilfully takes the teacher/parent through the
installation procedure, describes each activity in detail and, at the
back, provides a welcome list of follow-up activities. Also enclosed are
twenty six, coloured, A4 picture cards which can be mounted, and will
provide a very attractive wall chart. Finally, there are three record
sheets that can be used as a check-list for each of the three
activities. All in all, the support materials should be very useful, as
well as being impressively presented.
8.9
Conclusions
8.9
This program is great. Not only are the educational aims sound and
clearly stated, they are executed with considerable skill. The look of
the program with its ‘schoolkid’ font, backdrops and letter design, is
first rate. The digitised sounds are crystal clear and the intonation
natural. Gone are the days when robotic voices marred a good program. If
I were to be over critical, I would say that, whilst the morphing of
letter to picture is excellent, the animations are minimal and a touch
disappointing. However, this is a small point in the overall structure
of the program which is easy to understand, easy to use and, at today’s
prices, fairly easy on the pocket. Designed for both home and school
use, it costs £35.20 or £33 through Archive, with a CD version promised
for the future. Highly recommended. u
8.9

8.9
Small Ads
8.9
(Small ads for Acorn 32-bit computers (i.e. not BBC’s) and related
products are free for subscribers but we reserve the right to publish
all, part or none of the material you send, as we think fit. i.e. some
people don’t know what ‘small’ means and there are certain things, as
you can imagine, that we would not be prepared to advertise as a matter
of principle. Sending small ads (especially long ones!) on disc is
helpful but not essential. Ed)
8.9
12 station Nexus complete with cards, cables & server, £1500. Phone
0181-547-6847.
8.9
4Mb SIMM for Risc PC £90. 210Mb IDE drive (Conner ex Risc PC) £90.
Scanlight 256 £120. Phone [phone] after 6.
8.9
A3000 4Mb memory, RISC OS 3.1, 20Mb IDE HD, Taxan monitor, Ovation, PC
Emulator, Genesis, Almanac and lots of games £500. Phone/Fax 01732-
454707.
8.9
A3000 4Mb, 45Mb Oak HD, 45Mb Syquest removable HD + 3 × 45Mb cartridges,
Oak SCSI external interface, Acorn RGB monitor, Panasonic KXP1124 24pin
printer + support plinths for monitor and printer, assorted software,
manuals and books. Cannot split. All v.g.c. £950 o.v.n.o. Phone Neil
Berry (daytime) 0116-252-5060.
8.9
A310 1Mb twin 3.5in 800Kb floppies, RISC OS 2, Acorn black and white
monitor, manual £120. Epson LQ850 24pin dot matrix and sheet feeder £70,
120Mb SCSI disc £80, MS-DOS 6.2 and Windows 3.11, discs only, £50, MS-
DOS 6.2 and Windows 3.1, discs only, £45. ROM/RAM podule (64Kb +
battery), Phillips yellow/white monitor, Schema 1, Acorn 2 slot
backplane/fan, Acorn mouse, Electron Plus One £15 each. All excluding
delivery. Phone [phone] eves, w/e.
8.9
A4 portable 80Mb HD, Econet interface RISC OS 3.1 mains adaptor and case
£900. Phone [phone].
8.9
A4 portable 4Mb RAM, 80Mb hard disc, spare battery, carry case and
tracker ball £1100 o.n.o. Contact Adrian on 01603-748253.
8.9
A4000 4Mb RAM, 80Mb hard disc, hi-res multiscan monitor, boxed with
manuals. £650. Phone [phone] after 4pm.
8.9
A5000 4Mb RAM, 40Mb HD, RISC OS 3.1, Colour Card Gold, all vgc. £750.
Panasonic KXP 1124 £50. Pace Microlin fx Pocket fax modem £90. Phone
Pete 01663-733027.
8.9
A5000 4Mb RAM, 40Mb HD, AKF50 monitor, Learning Curve, some games,
manuals. £800 ono. Phone [phone] (eves).
8.9
A5000 8Mb RAM, 120Mb HD, internal IDE 105Mb SyQuest (no cartridge), Eizo
F550i 17“ multisync. A highly capable system − can be seen at NCS. £1300
complete, or £400 for monitor alone. Phone Iain Cameron on 01463-751251.
8.9
A5000 4Mb RAM, 120Mb HD, RISC OS 3.1, Acorn Multisync, £800 o.n.o.
ARCticulate £7, Enter the Realm £7, Sensible Soccer − International
Edition £10, Archive Mousemat £1.50. Magazine coverdiscs (1991 onwards,
ArcWorld, Acorn User and Acorn Computing) £1 each. Contact Jon Aylwin, 4
St Margarets Close, Hemyock, Devon, EX15 2XJ.
8.9
A5000 4Mb RAM, 40Mb HD, Econet interface, RISC OS 3.1, AKF18 multiscan
monitor, £600. Phone [phone].
8.9
A540, 8Mb RAM, RISC OS 3.10, 120Mb SCSI hard drive, Eizo 9060S multisync
£850. Software includes Easiwriter, PipeDream 4 and Interdictor. Cumana
5¼“ floppy drive plus interface £30. Phone [phone].
8.9
AKF17 Acorn monitor, boxed and unused £65 o.n.o. Keyboard for A4000
boxed and unused £65 o.n.o. Phone [phone].
8.9
Aleph One 486PC podule 4Mb/50MHz + floating point co-processor, !PC
v1.69 + Windows acceleration software. Fits A400 series, Risc PC etc.
£350. Phone James on 01954-210388.
8.9
Complete Acorn DTP System A410/1 4Mb RAM, 33MHz ARM3, 42Mb HD, Taxan 770
+ 14“ Multiscan monitor, RISC OS 3.1, Atomwide VIDC Enhancer, Qume
LaserDirect 300dpi printer with spare drum (unused), ScanLight Plus
greyscale scanner, Oak SCSI card, PC Emulator, Impression Publisher,
Artworks, Compression, TurboDriver for HP Laserjet and Deskjet, Acorn C,
clip art, extra fonts, all manuals, cables, some games, £1100. Phone
Steve on 0181-560-0427.
8.9
Expansion cards Acorn Midi c/w EMR Studio 24+ (v2) £80, Aleph One 486PC
(4Mb/50MHz) c/w latest software & Microsoft MS-DOS (v5) £400, GammaPlot
(v2) £15, System Delta+ (v2) £25, Genesis (v2) £20, Christmas Allsorts
£10, Prehistoric Animals £5, Bonjour de France − Ma Ville £20, Driving
Test £10, Droom £10, Giant Killer £5, Healthdata £5, Help! £3,
Telecommunications £8, Word Up Word Down £3, Genesis Script Language £5,
MS-DOS Quick reference £5, RISC OS 2 PRM’s £35. All original software
with documentation etc. Phone [phone] (eves + w/e).
8.9
FireWorkz Pro £100, ProArtisan 24 £100, complete boxed and manuals.
Phone [phone].
8.9
Games Saloon Cars Deluxe, Chopper Force, Black Angel and Lemmings. (All
except Black Angel incompatible with Risc PC!) £8 each. Phone 01674-
830895
8.9
Genesis 2 with script language handbook and manuals £59. Genesis
Developer’s Guide £25. Phone Roy on 01344-411252 (eves + w/e).
8.9
Impression Style inc latest TableMate 2, manuals and extra borders £70.
EasiWriter v3.05 £80. Phone [phone].
8.9
Psion LZ 64, 64Kb Datapack, two spell checkers and thesaurus, Commslink,
mains adapter. Good condition, boxed + instructions £85 o.n.o. Phone
01332-557751.
8.9
PostScript laser printer − Star 300 dpi, 8 ppm, 2Mb RAM. Boxed with
manuals, new fuser unit. Offers around £350. Phone [phone].
8.9
Qume Laser Direct 300 dpi printer, recent new drum and one toner
cartridge. Good condition £350. Phone Paul Cayton 01943-878133 (eves) or
0113-277-7711 (day).
8.9
Software: Artisan 1, Interdictor 1, Pandora’s Box, The Olympics, E-Type,
Repton 3, PipeDream 4, PipeLine discs Feb 92 to Aug 93, Flexifile, LC
DTP, LC Genesis Plus, Personal Accounts 2 and DeskTop Thesaurus. Any
offers. Phone David on 01752-781286 between 8 am and 8 pm. u
8.9

8.9
Spreadsheet Column
8.9
Chris Johnson
8.9
Eureka
8.9
I have had further confirmation from a number of users of the printing
bug, where the last part of the text in a cell can be cropped. Most
users who wrote treat this feature simply as a niggle, and generally
take care to ensure that cell widths are adjusted so that the contents
do not entirely fill the cell.
8.9
One correspondent has drawn my attention to what is a more serious
problem, concerned with the printing of embedded bar charts. The problem
appears to depend upon how the chart is selected for printing. When the
print is carried out by selecting all the cells around the embedded
chart and choosing Options > Set print area, followed by choosing Print,
the chart prints normally in portrait or landscape mode, whether or not
gridlines are printed, and so on.
8.9
The bad printouts occurred when the chart was selected by putting the
pointer over the chart and clicking <select> while <ctrl> is held down.
This selects the chart for editing. If the chart is then printed, the
bar fills do not correspond to the border outline of each bar. The
outline offsets further to the right with each bar going across the page
to the right. In some cases, there is a vertical offset as well. On
switching between landscape and portrait, the result is more disastrous,
since all components of the stacked bars on the chart are printed in
black. The effect can be created on a repeatable basis, although the two
forms of the effect appear to change over between landscape and portrait
on a random basis. The moral is that you do not print an embedded chart
while it is selected for editing.
8.9
Another feature which has come to light is associated with changing the
screen size while a sheet is open. Eureka appears to take no notice of
changes to the screen size on going to a smaller screen. For example, if
you are in a large mode (e.g. 1280×1024), and have the sheet covering a
large area of the screen, then on changing to say 800×600, the sheet
exceeds the screen size and spills over the edges. You may be able to
find a button to resize the sheet size, but if, like me, you arrange the
edit window at the top of the screen, you may still find that the edit
window is off-screen and cannot be recovered, unless you go back to the
large screen. This is rather odd, since the WIMP window manager normally
forces all windows on screen when a mode change occurs.
8.9
A further problem concerns the toggle icon at the far right of the edit
window button bar. When going to a smaller screen, the button bar is
truncated at the right hand end, so the toggle button is lost. This is
not recoverable because, on returning to the larger screen, the edit bar
is not resized to fit the new screen, so the toggle button is still
unavailable. Even closing and reopening the sheet, or opening a
different sheet, has no effect. Do users regularly change screen size,
or is this a feature that very few users would ever come across? I have
done this occasionally when going to a 32000 or 16 million colour mode
on my Risc PC, which requires going down to 800×600, when I normally use
a large screen mode with fewer colours.
8.9
The future
8.9
I feel that this column is tending to become a catalogue of relatively
minor problems with Eureka, and I would not like prospective new users
to get the wrong idea. I am very satisfied with Eureka in general, and
think it is a very good piece of software. It has done everything I have
asked it to do with very little problem, and is easy to use. I hope
readers will use the comments to get the best out of Eureka, and to
avoid such problems before they actually occur. Forewarned is forearmed.
8.9
I would prefer this column to be much more positive and constructive, so
I would welcome suggestions as to how I could best provide something for
everyone. Should the column become more of a tutorial on the use of
spreadsheets, for example, or has Gerald Fitton covered spreadsheets
sufficiently in his columns? In that event, it would be very helpful for
readers to outline ways in which they make use of spreadsheets,
particularly slightly unusual uses. Perhaps Paul has some ideas on the
way forward? (No, sorry! Isn’t it better for the readers to tell us what
they want to read? Ed.)
8.9
How to contact me
8.9
My postal address is Chris Johnson, 7, Lovedale Grove, Balerno,
Edinburgh, EH14 7DR; I can also be contacted by e-mail as
[e-mail] − please note the new e-mail address.
8.9
I am happy to receive anything in connection with spreadsheets, hints or
tips, macros, problems, solutions to problems, or just requests for
help. What would be of interest are examples of unusual uses of
spreadsheets. u
8.9

8.9
RiscDOS Column
8.9
Simon Coulthurst
8.9
I recently had to pay for the PC486 card that is installed in my Risc
PC. “Poor old you!”, you may well be thinking, “at least you’ve actually
got a PC486 card!” This is true. My reason for mentioning it, is that it
illustrates that the hardware side of the product is complete, and that
all that remains is to ensure that the software is finished.
8.9
!PC486 update
8.9
On the 17th of February, I received a new version of the PC card
software. This new version (1.72g) now provides full support for direct
parallel and serial port access. I was also informed that this was
likely to be the last ‘beta’ version of the software. This being the
case, with the hardware already being the ‘final’ version, it looks as
though Acorn’s proposed release date of early April 1995 will be kept
to.
8.9
(We’ve had a few through − but only enough to fulfil about 20% of our
back order list although the rate at which they are coming does seem to
be increasing. Ed.)
8.9
My Risc PC 486 card is now two months old. I have had it long enough now
for the initial euphoria, that comes with most new products (let alone
one as important as this), to wear off. It is a sign of how good the
product is that, after the initial setup and configuration period (the
first couple of weeks ironing out teething problems and getting
connected to our network), I have used it on a daily basis without
really thinking about it!
8.9
(If you think about it, that is actually a very significant (under-)
statement. Simon is transparently using a 486 processor, sharing memory
and peripherals with a RISC processor. OK, so it’s very overdue, but
don’t let that fact blind us to the technical signifance of what Acorn
and partners have achieved here. How many other computers do you know
that have this kind of dual processor arrangement working today? The
“best of both worlds” is here at last. Ed.)
8.9
I am connected
8.9
When I first received the card, it had already been installed and setup
on my Risc PC by Acorn. They had loaded PC DOS and Windows for
Workgroups as well as some Lotus software for me to try out. This setup
obviously worked well, and first time − as you would expect. It was not
long, however, before I started tinkering with this setup in order to
get it working the way I wanted it. This primarily meant gaining access
to our server, which runs Novell Netware 3.12 (by far the most common
networking software in general business use).
8.9
I had the standard Acorn Ethernet adaptor for the Risc PC already
installed in my machine. All that was required to get my PC486 card
connected to the network was a physical connection and the necessary
software. The first part was easy − an extra length of cable with a T-
piece connector. The second part was harder. Acorn, whilst providing
both a PC card and a Ethernet adaptor, do not provide any software that
would allow the two to work together. Rather, they have decided that
third party solutions will be the order of the day!
8.9
The third party solution in my case was provided by Aleph One. They have
a product, snappily entitled ‘!PC Network Drivers’ (OK, so the title may
not be all that original but at least you are left in no doubt as to
what it does). Basically, this product allows the Ethernet adaptor in
the Risc PC to emulate an NE2000 Ethernet adaptor when the PC486 card is
being used. You can then use any standard DOS or Windows software that
works with the NE2000 adaptor.
8.9
It works by using two relocatable modules, PCNE2 and ETHER3 (there are
several supplied, depending on the Ethernet card being used). These
modules are copied into the !PC directory on the Risc PC’s hard disc.
Then the !PC’s !Run file needs to be loaded into a text editor, and the
lines referring to the two modules (already present in the !Run file)
need to be enabled by removing the ‘|’ comment character at the start of
each line.
8.9
Once this has been done, the PC software will need to be loaded from
within the PC486 card environment. The commands needed on my own machine
are as shown opposite. These commands are in a batch file called from my
autoexec.bat file.
8.9
You will need a DOS NE2000 driver because one is not provided with the
Aleph One software (though this may change). A word of warning here. I
used, at first, what I thought was an NE2000 driver that had come with
one of our NE2000-compatible adaptor cards in another computer. I got
all sorts of problems trying to get my computer to connect to the
server. Unfortunately, it was not immediately obvious that it was the
driver at fault, and this resulted in a large amount of communication
between myself and Aleph One. Once we tried another driver, it did work,
and it was then obvious what the problem had been! So, be warned, make
sure your NE2000 driver is compatible.
8.9
The software that allows this NE2000 emulation is available from Aleph
One for £25 +VAT. I am sure that, if you ask nicely, they will also be
able to provide a suitable DOS NE2000 driver as well.
8.9
Compatibility problems
8.9
At one point, I decided to try out one of the other Windows screen
drivers, to see if the Acorn supplied armdrv.drv was responsible for a
problem I was having with a PC CD ROM (see below). I installed the other
driver using the Windows Setup program and this worked fine. However,
when I came to re-install armdrv.drv, I found it was not listed under
Windows Setup, and so could not be re-installed. The solution is to edit
the system.ini file located in the Windows directory and replace the
line that reads display.drv=vga.drv (or whatever driver you last used)
with the line display.drv=armdrv.drv. This line is in the first [boot]
section of system.ini. You should always use the armdrv.drv file as it
is responsible for a great deal of the speed that the PC486 card can
achieve − using the Risc PC as an accelerated driver for Windows, when
the DOS environment is in full screen mode.
8.9
After I had setup my PC486 card to run on our Novell network and then
run the Network Setup program in Windows, I found that, on exiting
Windows, I was left with no DOS prompt and just a flashing cursor on the
screen. No matter how long I waited, I still could not get the C:>
prompt back. The only way out was to re-boot by pressing <crtl-alt-del>
several times. The solution was to run Network Setup again, to remove
network support from Windows, and then run it once more to re-install
network support.
8.9
I was having problems with running a CD-ROM given away with the March
issue of PCW magazine. Every time I tried to run the setup file, from
within Windows, my whole machine would lock up. The solution was to
disable 32-bit file access under the Virtual Memory control panel in
Windows.
8.9
At first, I found that I was unable to run DOS programs, across the
network, from within Windows. All I would get was a blank screen.
Finally, I found the solution the problem which was to change to the
Windows-supplied VGA driver and then back again to the armdrv.drv driver
(see above). This forced Windows to install all the correct support
files for DOS in a window.
8.9
Future strategy
8.9
Acorn have already stated that they are working on further enhancements
to the Risc PC’s PC486 card. Some of these will be in software, and thus
will be available to all PC486 card owners as an upgrade. Others will be
in a second generation hardware product. The list of possible
enhancements is as follows (actual details when known)...
8.9
Software
8.9
u 24-bit colour drivers
8.9
u Sound blaster emulation
8.9
      16-bit sample sound playback
8.9
      Polyphonic Midi synthesizer
8.9
      8-channel 128 general Midi voices − R.A.M.
8.9
u Shared memory windows drivers
8.9
u Tighter Windows/RISC OS integration
8.9
u OS/2 Driver support
8.9
Hardware
8.9
u Committed to produce ASIC release 2
8.9
u Write back secondary cache controller
8.9
u Support for 512k SRAM
8.9
u Dirty cache buffer
8.9
u Deeper open bus write buffer
8.9
u Burst mode controller
8.9
u Ability to support many more varieties of 486 processors, e.g. AMD,
Intel, UMC
8.9
And finally...
8.9
Thank you for the comments received following the initial review of the
PC486 card (and my database review). I have tried to reply to them all.
If I have missed you, I apologise and will do my best to reply a.s.a.p.
8.9
If you want to see what the PC486 card looks like, and you are on the
Internet, point your WWW browser at the following page:
8.9
http://www.csv.warwick.ac.uk/~phudv/Htmls/pccard.html
8.9
Or for more information, try...
8.9
http://www.ant.co.uk/com/aleph-one/html
8.9
If, like me, you are waiting with bated breath for a commercial Internet
access suite on the Risc PC/Archimedes, you will be pleased to know that
ANT Ltd are hoping to launch their (promising looking) Internet Suite in
the 2nd quarter of 1995 − hopefully May. Let’s just hope that ANT’s
definition of a calendar quarter is more accurate than Acorn’s!
8.9
I may be contacted by email as: [e-mail]. co.uk or by snailmail
at Arnold Grimshaw Limited, 68a Armley Road, Leeds, LS12 2EJ. u
8.9

8.9
lh c:\netware\lsl.com
8.9
lh c:\netware\ne2000.com
8.9
lh c:\netware\ipxodi.com
8.9
lh c:\netware\netx.exe
8.9
@ECHO OFF
8.9
Q:
8.9
LOGIN SIMON
8.9
C: CD\
8.9

8.9
Speech II
8.9
Simon Weaver
8.9
Computer-produced speech has been around for many years in sci-fi films,
teasing many people about just what is really possible from machines.
Unfortunately, assuming it is even possible, we have many years to wait
until a computer will be able to read our favourite novels or the news
to us in the style to which we have become accustomed.
8.9
Superior Software have been working for many years in the speaking
computer field. Starting with the BBC Micro and moving up to the 32-bit
machines, its speech synthesizer, Speech, has received much praise.
Available now is a new version which features a much improved
dictionary, better quality of speech, a friendlier dictionary editor,
interactive help, accented characters and four new phonemes for foreign
language support.
8.9
How it works
8.9
For the uninitiated, a speech synthesizer simply attempts to read out
any text that you care to throw at it. It can be used in a
wordprocessor, Basic, ARM code etc, for just about any application where
human speech is required (although licensing would have to be pursued
for use in commercial products). The process converts English words to
phonemes, which are the most basic sounds, like A in apple, and ZH in
measure. The problems arise when you try to speak a word which doesn’t
sound as it is written, and that is where the improved ‘dictionary’
comes in handy. For instance, with the word ‘through’, there is a
dictionary entry ‘TH R UW’, so that Speech doesn’t pronounce it with a
‘g’ sound.
8.9
Speech II has some quite sophisticated rules to help the pronunciation
and, if you feel up to it, you can change them. Luckily, this is not
necessary for nearly all users, but the support is there if needed. As
an example, the rules allow Speech to correctly pronounce numbers up to
9999 and to choose the correct pronunciation of ‘the’, depending on the
following word.
8.9
(Try saying “the book” and “the end” and you’ll hear the difference.
Ed.)
8.9
Despite a dictionary of several thousand words, it can be almost
guaranteed that you will have problems pronouncing some words,
particularly names, foreign words and technical terms. For example,
Speech cannot pronounce “Risc PC” if it is typed as one word, and it is
necessary to add it to the dictionary. Despite what Superior Software
claims, changing the dictionary isn’t quite as friendly as it could be.
Adding a word involves dragging the dictionary file onto Speech,
changing the words, opening the application directory and then saving a
new speech module. There is no friendly menu option to edit words, but
if Speech is to be used in a classroom environment, this may not be a
bad thing if you don’t want your dictionary scrambled!
8.9
When editing words, a list of phonemes is shown and, by clicking on
them, you can build up the pronunciation. It is very important to use
lower-case letters when you type in the word itself, and upper-case when
changing the phonemes, but this isn’t a problem once you realise the
difference.
8.9
Speech quality
8.9
The quality of the speech is very good, and you can change many aspects
to affect the tone and speed of the voice. You can also alter the pitch
of individual phonemes to add intonation to words and even to sing!
Unfortunately, unlike the much older ARCticulate from The Fourth
Dimension, it is not really possible to have a voice which sounds
realistically like a female. In any case, ARCticulate has a much less
flexible dictionary and fewer phonemes, so I would now consider it out
of date. By comparison, Speech II actually resembles closely the voice
of the physicist Stephen Hawking and, though it may take a while to
start with, almost any child will be able to understand it. Hawking’s
voice is generated by expensive hardware and so Speech II is an absolute
bargain by comparison.
8.9
Other facilities
8.9
As well as the dictionary editor, Speech II also comes with spelling and
demonstration programs to show off some of its capabilities. The best
bit of the demonstration is to show the singing ability of Speech with a
rendition of ‘Daisy, Daisy’. This is impressive, and the manual shows
the pitches corresponding to musical notes so that you can have a go
yourself, though it is quite fiddly to get it right.
8.9
It is the spelling program which I feel lets Speech down somewhat. It
doesn’t appear to have changed much and a lot of the words are badly
pronounced, e.g. ‘sheep’ sounded like ‘jeep’. You can edit the words and
sentences yourself, and this is essential for serious use. There is a
full German version of Speech, and of SpeechSpell too, but all the
instructions and progress comments are in English! It’s true that my
German is hardly up to scratch, but the German spelling program seemed
far too unfair regarding initial capital letters, and the use of the
German letter ß was confusing. Apart from that, though the German speech
is very good, it is obviously not a replacement for a real German tutor.
I wouldn’t recommend it for people without a fair experience with ‘real’
German speech, in the same way as the English version isn’t suitable as
an English language tutor for two-year olds.
8.9
Conclusion
8.9
A speech synthesizer can have many uses and is suitable for just about
anyone. It will integrate seamlessly into some word-processors and speak
your work back to you, or it can be used in your own projects where
sampling full sentences is too impractical. You can just drop a text
file onto it and have it read to you. Thousands of primary school
children are now used to having their work read back to them to check
for those difficult-to-spot but easy-to-make mistakes, and it is equally
suitable for any computer user who needs their work proof-read by
someone/thing else. Apart from a couple of minor niggles which do not
get in the way of its purpose, Speech II is excellent and, at only £29
inclusive through Archive (or £33 for German Speech), it is very good
value.
8.9
An upgrade is available from Speech I by sending £10 to Superior
Software. u
8.9

8.9
PD Column
8.9
David Holden
8.9
You may have wondered what happened to the APDL competition. There has
been rather a long delay in making the final choices, at first because
there were a couple of late entries, and then because some of the
programs had bugs and I wanted to give the authors time to fix them.
8.9
If you are a PD/Shareware author and have missed out this time, don’t
despair. There will be another competition, and I will accept entries at
any time. If you are interested, don’t just send your program. First
send a blank, formatted disc with a self-addressed return label and a
stamp to the APDL address and I will return it with a copy of the rules,
plus a lot of useful information on how your program will be judged.
8.9
Now to the winners of the current competition.
8.9
ClicBack
8.9
This has been awarded the first prize of £100.
8.9
ClicBack is a superb hard disc backup utility from Steve Spry. It has
all the features you would expect of a commercial program. Full,
differential or incremental backup, compression; it can backup to
floppies or another hard disc, backup only selected directories or
files; it can exclude any directories or files, not compress some
filetypes to save time (e.g. ArcFS or CFS files); password protection,
etc. The restore can be to any drive and you can also retrieve
individual files or directories, so you don’t have to go through the
full restore procedure if you delete something by mistake. Because it
can backup and restore to and from any filing system, you can use a
Syquest drive as the storage media, and it should work with any third
party hi density interfaces.
8.9
There is a good manual but, in fact, ClicBack is very easy to use, and
you won’t have to re-read it every time you want to make a backup.
8.9
ClicBack is Shareware, with a registration fee of £10. This is extremely
good value for such a comprehensive program, only a fraction of the
price of equivalent commercial products, but there is another good
reason for using ClicBack. All of this money is given to the Cancer and
Leukaemia In Childhood Trust, which explains the name of the program. I
did not allow this to influence my decision as I felt that programs
should be judged entirely on their merits, but I hope that it will
encourage you to use it.
8.9
Tiger
8.9
This is the winner of the second prize of £40.
8.9
Some people find that the limit of ten characters for a filename or
directory is rather limiting. Tiger is a utility by Graham Crow which
helps to overcome this problem. It displays a window in which you can
enter a description up to 110 characters long − which should be enough
to identify any file.
8.9
In use, Tiger displays its own filer window which, as well as the file
icon and filename, shows the full description of each file. You can run
programs from this window and, in fact, it behaves in a similar manner
to a normal filer window. The data is held in a special file in each
directory and you can just double click on this from a ‘normal’ window
to see the descriptions, or you can traverse directory structures using
the Tiger windows, in which case the full descriptions are always shown.
8.9
Because of the way Tiger works, it is more ‘robust’ than some similar
programs I have seen. It also allows you to use it only where it is
advantageous. You are unlikely to need long descriptions of applications
and utility programs, but it is very useful for directories containing
correspondence and similar items. It works equally well with floppy or
hard discs, and you can use it as a ‘disc index’ for a floppy, as the
data file is kept on the actual disc.
8.9
I won’t bother to list all the features of Tiger, but there is one that
I will mention. You can save the descriptions as a text file which can
then be used as a record. This can be just a single directory or it can
operate recursively, so you could have a complete printed record of a
structure on your hard disc, if you needed it.
8.9
If you think you have seen Tiger before, you are probably right. An
early version was published in Risc User a long while ago, but it has
been very much improved and is now Shareware, with a registration fee of
£15. Although it is not crippled (or I wouldn’t have allowed it as an
entry), the ‘save text’ function is not included on the unregistered
version. However, almost everything else does work, so you can try it
properly before you register.
8.9
Oh, yes, I guess you’ll be wondering about the name? Well, Tiger = BIG
CATalogue!
8.9
Other prizes
8.9
There are three other prizes, each of £20. The lesser amount does not
necessarily indicate that the program is inferior. I gave considerable
weighting to the usefulness of a program when judging, and was careful
not to put too much emphasis on technical merit. I think you will agree
that the first two winners are almost universally useful, but the
following three will not interest everybody.
8.9
Seek
8.9
This is a utility from Mike Williams for looking up Bible references. It
contains the complete text of the King James Bible, and although this is
compressed, it does make it rather large.
8.9
Seek can be used to search for individual words or groups of words and
it will display each verse in which the word(s) appear. You can then
save the references as a text file.
8.9
The complete application takes over 2Mb of disc space. Don’t think that
this makes it impossible to use if you don’t have a hard disc. When
archived using ArcFS, it fits comfortably on a 1.6Mb floppy, and it will
run perfectly from the archive. It can be used directly from a floppy
disc in this form, although the search will obviously be much slower; an
obvious alternative is to run it from  RAM disc. I mention all of this
because you should be able to use Seek from either floppy, hard disc or
RAM disc on almost any machine except a 1Mb computer with an 800Kb
drive. Even then it won’t be impossible; you will just have to search in
two stages.
8.9
Seek won’t be of interest to everyone, but because of its ability to
search for combinations of words, it’s much more convenient than using
Zap or Edit on text files. Even if you are not interested in the Bible,
it is adaptable for other purposes. There is a full technical
description of the way it operates, and so it should be possible to
create your own data files from almost any text.
8.9
Ashkeva Alyedin
8.9
This is a text adventure from Andrew Fintham. You may recall that this
was included some time ago on a selection of text adventures that I
offered. I shall therefore not dwell upon it at length, but if you like
text adventures, this is a good example. It can be run either in a
desktop window or outside the desktop, so you don’t have any
distractions.
8.9
Verb Master
8.9
This is a new program from Nigel Caplan who wrote Lingo Master which won
a prize in the last competition. Unlike Lingo Master, this is a full
Wimp program. It displays the selected verb in a desktop window with its
conjugation, and you can easily select which tense you want to display.
There is a menu from which you can choose the verb you wish to examine.
There are, of course, many other features. (Coincidentally, we have a
review of this product in this month’s magazine on page 73. Ed.)
8.9
The program is Shareware and is supplied with a fairly small vocabulary
for the French language. However, it has been designed in a ‘modular’
form so that other languages can be added, and these are available. You
can, of course, add your own words. This program will probably be of use
to both students and anyone who needs to write letters in a foreign
language. It is often in the conjugation of a verb that a writer is most
likely to make a mistake, and that is the very thing that it is most
difficult to check quickly in a dictionary or textbook.
8.9
Special offer
8.9
It will not have escaped the notice of the observant reader that, as
with the last competition, most of the winners are Shareware. This is
not by chance, although I was careful to ensure that the nature of the
program didn’t influence me. If anything, I was biased towards programs
which did not have a registration fee because I felt that the author, if
not the program, was probably more deserving of the money. However,
there is no doubt that the professional approach required by Shareware,
and the need to include proper documentation, did have a significant
effect.
8.9
This month’s special offer is therefore a set of discs containing all of
these programs. There’s around 4Mb of material here, so the price will
be a bit more than usual, but it’s still very good value at only £3.
(stamps or cheque welcome). As with the previous competition, the
proceeds will go towards prizes for the next. For this reason, I am not
prepared to offer any of these programs individually, but they are, of
course, all available from APDL and most other libraries.
8.9
In view of the special nature of ClicBack, I have arranged to supply a
fully registered version, complete with laser-printed manual, as part of
this offer. The total price (including all the other programs) will then
be £13. There’s no price reduction because the extra money goes to CLIC.
This will save you the ‘trouble’ of registering, and I hope that it will
encourage you to use ClicBack. I’m sure you will not be disappointed.
8.9
As usual I can be contacted at the APDL address. u
8.9

8.9
Puzzle Corner
8.9
Colin Singleton
8.9
Paul’s new Bold Style highlighted the fact that the sections of last
month’s column were numbered 13, 14, 11, 12, 9, 10 − in that order! I
have decided to turn the column round, and present the puzzles in
numerical order − astute readers will now realise that the new puzzles
will be at the end! I have also retrospectively numbered the recent non-
prize puzzles.
8.9
(9) Egyptian Fractions
8.9
Dr W O Riha has disproved my conjecture that 1602 is the smallest
possible value of the largest denominator in the expansion of 50/89. He
found several solutions with six or more terms, including:
8.9
50/89 = 1/2 + 1/24 + 1/89 + 1/178 + 1/534 + 1/712
8.9
He and I have each developed (very different) techniques for generating
Egyptian expansions without trial and error.
8.9
(11) Prime Square
8.9
There are eight variations, by rotation and reflection, of the unique
fundamental solution, not two, as I inadvertently stated last month.
Readers who claimed more than one fundamental solution had failed to
ensure that the twenty numbers are all different. The prize goes to
Cornelia Rösch, of Essen, Germany.
8.9
(12) Anagram Dictionary
8.9
Prompted by readers’ entries, and my own further research, I have had to
re-think the answer to this puzzle. Modern dictionaries acknowledge an
increasing number of foreign words as having been accepted into English
usage. The first six entries in the Anagram Dictionary appear to be A AA
AAAAAALMRSTT (taramasalata) AAAAABBCDRR (abracadabra) AAAAABCCRS
(asarabacca − a medicinal plant) and AAAAACEHIMSTT (acatamathesia −
inability to comprehend data presented to the senses). The last six are
TTU (tut) TTUU (tutu − a ballet skirt) TUZZ (a tuft of hair) UWYZZ
(wuzzy) UY (yu − precious jade) and UZZ (zuz − an ancient Palestinian
coin). All these except wuzzy are in Chambers. The OED lists wuzzy, and
also the dubious tuz and tuzzy, which I have omitted. The prize for the
best answer goes, not for the first time, to John Greening of Edinburgh.
8.9
(13) Multiple Shifts
8.9
102564 × 4 = 410256. There can be no solutions for multiples >9, because
the two numbers would have different numbers of digits. The possible
solutions are formed by the digits of one cycle of the recurring decimal
representation of N/(10·M–1) where M is the required multiple and N is
any digit from M to 9. When 10·M–1 is prime, the first of these, M/
(10·M–1) gives the smallest solution. For M=2 this is given by 2/
19 = 0@Â10526315789473684Â2. However, if 10·M–1 is not prime, one of the
other values of N may give a smaller solution. In fact, this only
happens when M=5, in which case, N=7 gives a smaller solution than N=5.
The solutions are:
8.9
M=2   105263157894736842
8.9
M=3   1034482758620689655172413793
8.9
M=4   102564
8.9
M=5   142857
8.9
M=6
101694915254237288135593220338983            0508474576271186440677966
8.9
M=7   1014492753623188405797
8.9
M=8   1012658227848
8.9
M=9   10112359550561797752808988764044943            820224719
8.9
If we allow leading zeros on the numbers, solutions can be found for
multiples greater than nine, but the numbers above are not then the
smallest solutions for those multiples.
8.9
(14) Very Acute
8.9
To the best of my knowledge, a square can be dissected into a minimum of
eight acute-angled triangles, as shown in the diagram. The two internal
points must lie in one of the shaded areas, outside the semi-circles. I
look forward to seeing readers’ entries to this puzzle.
8.9
(15) Pangram Sentence
8.9
A number of 26-letter contributions have been received. The least
contrived, in my view, is Mr Jock, TV quiz PhD, bags few lynx (Guinness
Book of Records 1991). The shortest without proper names or
abbreviations is Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz, (31 letters)
submitted by A G Rimmer of Twickenham.
8.9
(16) Roots
8.9
The tenth root of ten is the 30th root of 1000. The cube root of two is
the 30th root of 1024, and is therefore larger.
8.9
(17) Knockout
8.9
The number of possible pairings of 32 players is ½ × 32 × 31 = 496, of
which Smith v Jones is one. The number of matches played in the
tournament is 31. The chance of Smith playing Jones is the ratio of
these, i.e. 1 in 16. (Originally published in the Indian Mathematical
Society Journal)
8.9
(18) No Progress
8.9
This month’s first Prize Puzzle is inspired by one in Computer Weekly.
The set of eight positive integers 1 2 4 5 10 11 13 14 contains no
subset of three numbers which are in arithmetic progression. 14 is the
smallest possible value for the largest member of such an eight-member
set. Can you find corresponding sets with 12 and 16 members?
8.9
The other prize will be awarded to the best trio of answers to the
following three quickies (19−21).
8.9
(19) Waterfall?
8.9
An Eskimo sits in his kayak on a calm lake. He takes a brick out of the
boat and drops it in the water. Does the water level rise, or fall, or
neither? Explain.
8.9
(20) Till Death Us Do Part
8.9
Smith and Jones contest a duel, shooting at each other alternately (not
simultaneously) until one is hit. Smith, who shoots first, has a one-in-
three chance of hitting his opponent with one shot, Jones has a 50−50
chance. Who has the better chance of winning the duel?
8.9
(21) Loony Post
8.9
According to a leaked document, the Unofficial Loony Party proposes to
change the prices of first and second class stamps. Even with an
unlimited supply of each, there will be 38 different values which you
cannot make exactly. What are the proposed postage rates?
8.9
Comments and solutions
8.9
Please send comments, contributions and solutions to me at 41 St Quentin
Drive, Sheffield, S17 4PN. Solutions by Friday 9th June, please. u
8.9

8.9
Gerald’s Column
8.9
Gerald Fitton
8.9
It has been hard for me to resist commenting on the !CCShared
contribution in last month’s Archive but, apart from an “I told you
so!”, I shall resist the temptation and concentrate on other matters.
8.9
This month, my major topic is recursive custom functions. Before you
turn to someone else’s column, let me say that I think you’ll understand
what I’ve written and, in order to motivate you to read what I have to
say, I shall use as my example something which seems to be highly
popular, a discussion of mathematical calculations relevant to the
National Lottery.
8.9
First of all though, here are three other small items.
8.9
Fireworkz Pro
8.9
By the time you read this, version 1.21 of Fireworkz Pro will be
available (I don’t have a copy yet – it’s in the post – but I have been
assured that the dateline of the new version is 27th April 1995). If you
want an upgrade, you must send both program and examples discs to Colton
Software, in a suitable padded envelope. It will help them if you
enclose a self-addressed sticky label. If you live in the UK, return
postage will be appreciated and help speed up their service to you.
8.9
When I get my copy, I’ll let you know what differences there are between
v1.21 and v1.20.
8.9
Viruses
8.9
I have received many interesting letters from people who have contracted
a virus. Almost without exception, they say that they thought it
wouldn’t happen to them – until it did. They echo my comment that it is
a traumatic experience and hope that it will never happen to them again.
Nearly all of these letters end with the request that I should warn
Archive readers to be careful, so that they don’t experience the same
trauma. Personally, I wish that some of these virus writers would stop
thinking how clever they are and think about the heartache they are
causing. They are abusing the talent they’ve been given.
8.9
PipeDream on the Risc PC
8.9
David Lenthall, amongst others, has written to me about the failure of
PipeDream to display row numbers correctly on the Risc PC. Perhaps, if
you have written to Colton Software about this problem, you would let me
know their reaction – after all, as many of you have pointed out to me,
Colton Software are still selling PipeDream. Is the problem going to be
fixed by Acorn in a future release of RISC OS or is it up to Colton
Software to fix it?
8.9
I have been struggling to find a ‘work around’. The best I can come up
with is to insert an additional column before the first column, so that
it becomes a new column A. The formula ‘row’ will return the row number
(eg 1234 in slot A1234). Enter ‘row’ in A1 and replicate it to the
bottom of the document. This process can be executed as a command file.
I include one on the Archive monthly disc.
8.9
The Lottery
8.9
This month many of the letters I have received ask me if I can provide a
spreadsheet application which will improve the user’s chances of winning
the lottery! Well, as a statistician, I have to believe that the numbers
which are selected by the lottery machine are random numbers. One of the
properties of random numbers is that all methods of prediction fail. To
put it as simply as I can; I can’t help you to win the lottery!
8.9
However, what I can do is to help you to understand how to calculate
your chances of winning, and I’ll comment on whether it is a worthwhile
gamble! On the way, I shall introduce you to the joys of using recursive
custom functions!
8.9
Some overseas subscribers to Archive may not know the details of our new
National Lottery, so I’ll give a brief description of how it works. To
participate, you select six numbers from the numbers 1 to 49 (i.e. there
are forty nine different numbers to choose from). You can use each
number only once in your selection of six. Unlike the typical office
sweepstake, many people may choose the same set of six numbers as you.
8.9
You pay £1 for each set of six numbers you choose. Each Saturday evening
at about 8 o’clock, six numbers are selected at random from the forty
nine using a glorified bingo machine full of numbered ping pong balls. A
seventh ball is selected and this is called the bonus ball (more of
which later). If your set of six balls is the same as those selected by
the machine, you’ve won the Jackpot. If more than one person wins the
Jackpot then it is shared out amongst the winners. There are also
consolation prizes; for example, if your set of six includes three of
the six winning numbers, you win a fixed prize of £10.
8.9
The binomial coefficients
8.9
The number of possible sets of six numbers drawn from forty nine
different numbers requires the evaluation of a well known mathematical
function which generates what are called the binomial coefficients.
Because the modern notation for this function is a little difficult (but
not impossible) to include many times in a word-processed document, I
shall call it by its old fashioned name, the nCr function. This function
has two parameters which are n, the number of numbers from which you can
make your selection (in this case 49) and r, the number of numbers
chosen (in this case 6). What we need to evaluate in this case is
nCr(n,r) where n = 49 and r = 6.
8.9
The value of nCr(49,6) is given by: (49*48*47*46 *45*44)/(6*5*4*3*2*1).
You will notice that there are r (i.e. 6) numbers on the top and r
numbers on the bottom of the fraction. The numbers on the top start at n
(i.e. 49) and work downwards; those on the bottom start at r (i.e. 6)
and work downwards.
8.9
Recurrence relationships
8.9
If you look at the expression for nCr(49,6), you will see that
nCr(49,6) = (49/6)*nCr(48,5). In other words, we can express the value
of nCr(49,6) in terms of nCr(48,5). In the same way we could express
nCr(48,5) as (48/5)*nCr(47,4) and so on – but not forever! In
mathematics (long before computers), this type of general statement is
an example of a recurrence relationship. It is:
8.9
 nCr(n,r) = (n/r)*nCr(n−1,r−1) for values of r>1.
8.9
When r = 1, we have a problem, because 1 − 1 = 0 and dividing by 0 is
one of those things that mathematicians (and computers) find difficult!
When r = 1 the value of nCr(n,1) = n. This leads us to a mathematical
statement which we can write in PipeDream or Fireworkz format as:
8.9
 if(r>1, nCr(n,r) = (n/r)*nCr(n−1,r−1), n)
8.9
Using recursion
8.9
There is a lot of snobbery about recursion. It is often portrayed as a
programming feature which can be used only by an expert. Don’t believe
it!
8.9
There are many useful mathematical functions (such as the nCr function
above) which are capable of simple expression as a recurrence
relationship but which, in explicit form, look overwhelmingly difficult
to understand! In these cases, using recursion makes the program easier
to write and easier to understand. When a program is easy to understand,
changing it (improving or expanding) is much easier. In those cases, I
recommend using recursion. Where the reasoning behind the use of
recursion is obscure, I would suggest that the writer is just showing
off!
8.9
There is a drawback to using recursion − it often takes longer to
evaluate than the explicit (but more complicated) version.
8.9
The recursive function
8.9
In the next paragraph, you will find the core of a PipeDream or
Fireworkz custom function which will calculate these binomial
coefficients. Usually, I add much more comment to my custom functions to
make them more readable. The version on the Archive monthly disc
includes the extra comment, as well as lines which demonstrate the
working of the custom function in detail.
8.9
...function(“binomial”,“n:number”,“r:number”)
8.9
Declare the ‘name’ of the one local variable, “answer”, and the slot it
uses
8.9
...set_name(“answer”,B5)               15 180
8.9
Initialise the local variable
8.9
...set_value(answer,0)
8.9
The next line contains the recursive call to the “binomial” function
8.9
...set_value(answer,
8.9
if(@r>1,@n/@r*binomial(@n−1,@r−1),@n))
8.9
Return the result
8.9
...result(answer)
8.9
The custom function is called “binomial”. The recursive call is made in
the line which starts “...set_value(answer,if . . . )”. This line
includes a call to the function “binomial” − that is to say the function
‘binomial’ calls itself! It is this feature of a function calling itself
which makes it recursive.
8.9
There is a difference in the arguments of the original function and the
arguments used in the recursive call. The original function calculates
nCr(n,r) whereas the recursive call calculates nCr(n−1,r−1). In fact,
after stripping out all the non-essential parts of the custom function
nCr, what you are left with is the recurrence relationship:
8.9
 nCr(n,r) = (n/r)*nCr(n−1,r−1).
8.9
What happens when the recursive function is executed is that the early
part of the function (down to the point of recursion) is executed
repeatedly, for reducing values of n and r. During this part of the
recursive procedure, the latter part of the recursive function is never
executed.
8.9
Naturally, we can’t keep going inwards for ever. When you set up a
recursive procedure then, like everything in life, it’s important to
know when to stop! In the case of nCr we have to stop the recursive
procedure when the value of r = 1 because the next incarnation would
lead us to try to divide by zero. We achieve this halt to the recursion
by using an if(,,) function. The innermost incarnation of “binomial”
does not call itself, because the if(r>1,,) ceases to be true.
8.9
What happens after the innermost incarnation of binomial has been
executed? If I haven’t lost you yet, you’ll probably realise that it is
the innermost incarnation of “binomial” which reaches the
‘...result(answer)’ line before any of the ‘outer’ incarnations. This
value is returned to the next incarnation (going outwards) which then
completes its execution down to ‘...result(answer)’.
8.9
Having ‘entered’ the recursive procedure r times, we must ‘unwind’ it by
running the ‘exit’ part of the custom function r times. One at a time,
the values of ‘...result(answer)’ are returned, until every incarnation
has been executed. Finally, the last value is returned to the main
spreadsheet.
8.9
Back to the Lottery
8.9
The value of nCr(49,6) is 13 986 816. This means that there are just
under 14 million different lines of six numbers available to you (and
others) when you choose your six numbers from forty nine. Your chance of
winning with just one line is about 14 million to 1 against!
8.9
The £10 prize
8.9
The number of ways of selecting three numbers from the winning six and a
further three numbers from the losing forty three is nCr(6,3)*nCr(43,3),
which is 246 820.
8.9
DeRef(slotref)
8.9
Let me use this calculation to explain something that has puzzled many
people using the same custom function twice within the same slot. What I
have to say applies to all custom functions and not only recursive
functions.
8.9
If you use the custom function as I’ve written it, you will find that,
instead of returning the value you want, the custom function will return
a much larger number. This larger number is nCr(43,3)*nCr(43,3). Somehow
or other, the spreadsheet has lost the value of nCr(6,3) and substituted
nCr(43,3). I would classify this as a bug but it is an obscure one with
an obscure work around. The work around is to change the last line of
the custom function from ‘...result(answer)’ to
‘...result(deref(answer))’. You will find some (very limited)
information about the deref() function in the PipeDream and Fireworkz
handbooks, but they won’t tell you that you should use deref() as a
matter of course when using custom functions that might be repeated
within the same slot.
8.9
I have included, on the Archive monthly disc, a much simpler example (a
custom function which adds together a couple of numbers) which gives the
incorrect answer when used twice within the same slot unless the deref()
construct is used.
8.9
Four of the six winning numbers
8.9
This is evaluated as nCr(6,4)*nCr(43,2). There are 13 545 of the
(approximately) 14 million lines which include four of the six winning
numbers.
8.9
Five of the six winning numbers
8.9
The formula this time is nCr(6,5)*nCr(42,1) and gives the answer 258.
8.9
Five plus bonus
8.9
There is one more combination which results in a prize, usually quite a
good one. To win this prize you must have five of the six winning
numbers and your sixth ball must be the seventh ball drawn by the
lottery machine; the last ball called the bonus ball. There are
nCr(6,5) = 6 lines (out of the 14 million) which can win this prize.
8.9
Gerald’s second rule of gambling
8.9
Now let me discuss whether it is worthwhile betting on the lottery.
8.9
For the purposes of teaching subjects such as Management Decision Making
(where the outcome of such management decisions is uncertain), I have
invented a few rules of gambling. My second rule is “Don’t gamble what
you can’t afford to lose”.
8.9
This rule is not intended to be a rule which relates to individual
morality – though there are moral overtones and, as a tutor and
counsellor of young students, I do come into contact with all too many
who are addicted to gambling. No! My second rule is one which should be
applied when the outcome of a decision is uncertain. I usually start my
lesson with a short discussion of gambling in general but quite quickly
get around to a discussion of buying insurance. You may think that
buying insurance has many things in common with betting on a horse in a
race! I take great pleasure in pointing out that if you don’t buy
insurance then you are also taking a gamble; you are gambling your house
against the possibility that it won’t burn down!
8.9
I go on to introduce the concept of a ‘fair bet’. A fair bet is one
where the amount you can win, multiplied by the probability of winning,
equals the stake. As an example, if you were to bet me 1 unit that a
single throw of a dice will result in a six then, for a fair bet, I
should offer you odds which will return 6 units to you if you win.
8.9
I continue my lecture by suggesting that there are situations where the
application of my second rule implies that it would be wrong to bet with
a ‘bookie’ who offers you a fair bet rather than one loaded in his
favour!
8.9
If you don’t insure your house, you are taking a gamble that most of you
can’t afford to lose! I point out that the application of my second rule
to such an insurance situation requires that, as the person insured, you
should place your ‘bet’ with an insurance company which doesn’t offer
you a fair bet – you should bet with one where the odds are loaded in
the insurance company’s favour (but not too much)! Why? I hesitate to
use the word “win” in this context, so I’ll say that it’s because you
want the company to be there and to pay out when your number comes up!
8.9
Applied to management decisions, the rule requires you to pass up on
some bets where the odds are in your favour because you can’t afford to
lose. I think that Nick Leeson’s recently publicised bet on the
Singapore derivatives market was of that type. The odds were in his
favour (he’d proved that in the past), but it was a bet he (or rather
his employers) couldn’t afford to lose.
8.9
A corollary of my second rule is that there are some occasions when you
may bet a small amount (which you can afford to lose), even though you
are not offered a fair bet, because the consequence of winning is to
change your life completely. The Lottery is not a fair bet because the
money returned in prizes is much less than the total stake money.
Nevertheless, you could convince yourself that it is OK to make the bet
(but only if you can afford to lose the £1 stake), because the
consequences of success would be to change your life.
8.9
To summarise, my second law of gambling will allow you to make an unfair
bet, but you should work out how unfair you think it is.
8.9
Marginal returns
8.9
In my decision-making course, I also discuss the concept of the marginal
return, as applied to big gambles. The following is my hypothetical
scenario. I am a multimillionaire. I suggest to you that you bet me one
penny against my million pounds on the toss of an unbiased coin. You
take the bet, because it is an unfair bet loaded in your favour. You
win. Your life will be different from here on! Now I suggest that we bet
again, but this time I bet ten million pounds and you must put up the
whole of your one million (you can’t put up only some of it). It is
still an unfair bet loaded in your favour but I ask you, would you take
the bet?
8.9
I have a rule about this situation too, but it is rather complicated, so
I won’t quote it. What I would ask you is “Would you prefer the lottery
to have more Jackpot winners of, say £1M, instead of the multi million
winners which the lottery currently creates?”
8.9
Finally
8.9
Although there is no way in which I (or anyone else) can predict the
numbers which will be generated by a random number generator, there is
something which might be useful to lottery punters; that is an
application which looks at the number of people who win with different
number combinations. There is no doubt that some numbers are more
popular than others and that, when these popular numbers come up, the
prizes are smaller than average. The converse of this is that if you bet
regularly on unpopular numbers then, when your numbers come up, even for
one of the minor prizes, you will receive more than that you expect if
you based your calculations on the odds for a fair bet.
8.9
If anyone has a database which includes both the list of winning numbers
and the number of people who have won the different minor prizes, I have
a lot of correspondents who would like a copy!
8.9
In conclusion
8.9
Although letters addressed to me via the Archive office will get here
eventually, it is usually much quicker to send them to me direct. My
address is that of Abacus Training. I prefer disc copies of
correspondence with a short hand-written note outlining what is on the
disc, a self-addressed sticky label and, if possible, return postage. u
8.9

8.9
The Engineer Speaks
8.9
Ray Maidstone
8.9
I thought this month it might be a good idea to give some tips on DIY
maintenance.
8.9
The computer
8.9
For the computer itself, there are a couple of things you can do. Once a
year, clean fan filters and fan blades using a 1cm (½“) paintbrush and a
vacuum cleaner. I mentioned in Archive 5.1 (in detail with diagrams!)
that it is better to fit the filter material outside the fan blades, so
that if the filter becomes blocked, there is still some airflow within
the machine.
8.9
Change batteries once a year in 310s, 410s and 440 series. You can check
the NiCads in 3000s, 540s and later machines − look carefully at the pcb
for signs of crystallization. If you find any, the batteries need to be
replaced by an Acorn Service Centre.
8.9
The keyboard
8.9
Try not to get any crumbs or cat fur inside, and no keyboard likes
coffee! There are full instructions for cleaning old style keyboards in
Archive 5.1, but newer ones are constructed using two foil membranes and
are a non-serviceable item. Do not be tempted at any time to use switch-
cleaner, as this is entirely unsuitable for Acorn keyboards.
8.9
Monitors?
8.9
There isn’t really anything you can do to service monitors, except maybe
clean the screen with anti-static wipes occasionally.
8.9
Mice
8.9
Mice can be given a wash and brush-up. Remove the ball and clean it with
detergent and water, then make sure it’s dry before replacing. Clean the
rollers gently, without scratching, using a scalpel or a miniature
screwdriver blade. Tip any bits of grime out, and make sure you don’t
have crumbs or dust on your mouse mat!
8.9
Printers
8.9
Dot matrix printers need to be serviced once a year, using the 1cm
paintbrush and vacuum cleaner again. After removing all dust and odd
bits of paper, you can lubricate the bar the print head travels along,
by placing a tiny drop of very light grade sewing machine oil next to
the print head and allowing it to spread the oil itself.
8.9
Bubble jets and ink jets are not really serviceable, as special
equipment is needed.
8.9
Try to use laser printers in as clean an environment as possible. There
is usually a felt rubbing bar for cleaning the diffuser, which you can
remove and clean as directed in your printer manual. These felt bars are
usually part of the equipment you get when you replace the toner
cartridge.
8.9
CDs & floppy drives
8.9
CD drives are another non-serviceable item, as CD drive cleaners do not
really have any effect.
8.9
Floppy drive cleaners can help if there is light soiling; otherwise they
are not much use.
8.9
Hard drives
8.9
These are not serviceable either, but you can extend their life by
keeping them cool and spinning them down as much as possible. It is a
good idea every couple of years to back up your drive, reformat it and
then re-install the information. This is because they tend to get a lot
of wear around the boot file and root directory area, and reformatting
helps distribute this more evenly.
8.9
For safety reasons, never take risks when handling electronic equipment
− if in doubt, always consult someone in the know! u
8.9

8.9
Hints and Tips
8.9
Canon BJ200 + CC TurboDriver − I have had a number of problems with this
combination, and thought my solutions may help others.
8.9
The first problem concerned the output of IBM ProPrinter strings. These
occur because the BJ-200 printer definition file supplied is an IBM
definition file, and should therefore be labelled as BJ10 since IBM
strings cannot be used in BJ200 mode. The converse also applies, i.e.
BJ-10 mode cannot handle Epson strings. I then used an Epson printer
definition file from the Acorn supplied discs, and all the problems
disappeared.
8.9
The second problem concerned printing from Basic. I have written a WIMP
application which writes out a series of results for the bridge club of
which I am a member. I need to write direct from Basic so that I can
alter the print style and line and row spacing to produce the best
layout, using the comprehensive spacing and styles provided in BJ200
mode. It makes no sense to write these strings to the screen so I use
*FX3,10 to start the printed output and *FX3,0 to stop it. Everything
prints perfectly, but a drawfile will not print afterwards. I eventually
discovered that the *FX3,10 caused a Turboqueue file to be created, but
the *FX3,0 command leaves the file open and thus hangs the printing
process. I finally received a letter from CC today and I quote:-
8.9
“Regarding the Basic printing ‘problem’. The operating system itself
will not close the printout file after a *FX3,0. Indeed, we have
reported this as a bug to Acorn. However, if you immediately follow the
*FX3,0 command with a VDU3, then the file will close correctly.”
8.9
I have tried it and it works!
8.9
John Wallace, Crawley
8.9
CD-ROMs − With the advent of magazine CD-ROMs, which usually come in a
soft plastic sleeve, the safe storage of these can be made using a 5¼“
disc box.
8.9
Ted Lacey, Southampton
8.9
Cursor movements in Publisher − There have been moans about one aspect
of Impression Publisher in various Acorn magazines: <shift-cursor> no
longer moves the cursor by one word, but is used for selecting text.
8.9
In the latest version (1.05) of Publisher, the Preferences dialogue box
contains the option “Shift Cursor Word Move”, so you can take your pick.
8.9
Jochen Konietzko, Köln, Germany
8.9
Debugging via the serial port − Why has no-one extolled the virtues of a
second machine connected via the serial port? Even on the old BBC B,
this can be very useful. A trivial Basic program on the second machine
will print out the incoming data stream. Debugging time can then be cut
by such simple things as
8.9
os_cli(echo Start of initialise() {serial: });
8.9
in a C file. Clearly this is rather basic; a variadic function like
printf() is much more flexible, but the general usefulness, especially
when working on desktop applications, is considerable. Besides, there
must be lots of old machines around gathering dust. I use an old mono
Kaga monitor I’ve had since soon after the BBC first came out, and an
old 310 with no disc drive.
8.9
John West, Surrey
8.9
Deskjet 540 problems − I recently bought an HP DeskJet 540, the
replacement for the DJ520 and then spent a frustrating weekend trying to
get it to work with my A5000. I got beautiful printouts but it took half
an hour to print an A4 page. I tried the latest Acorn DeskJet driver
sent to me by Gerald Fitton, but it was no better than previous
versions.
8.9
As soon as Monday came, I phoned Acorn and they had just heard from
their Australian office that other people had similar problems. Since
the DeskJet 540 is software controlled and the Centronics protocol has
been slightly modified, the 540 and A5000 were incompatible.
8.9
The earlier Deskjet 520 was perfectly suitable to work with the A5000
but it was now officially off the market. Fortunately, the shop where I
purchased the 540 gave me a full refund when I explained the dilemma,
and I knew that I had seen a 520 recently in another store. I was lucky
and purchased the last one in stock − its monochrome resolution 600 by
300 is the same as the 540 but it does not have the colour upgradability
of the 540.
8.9
Acorn say that the 540 should work satisfactorily with the Risc PC but
not with earlier computers, due to hardware differences in the
controller.
8.9
(I gather that, after further investigation, it seems that the problem
is only with certain A5000s, not with all of them. Ed.)
8.9
Michael Nurse, Cambridge
8.9
Gang Screen in RISC OS 3.5 − With reference to Hints & Tips (Archive
8.7), the list of names can be initiated by four clicks of the menu
button over any part of © Acorn Computers Ltd, 1994, although it
sometimes refuses to work again until after a reboot.
8.9
M R Buckland, Daventry
8.9
Impression printing − Now, I know you all know this, but... for months,
I have been cursing the fact that, with Acorn’s new printer drivers and
LaserDirect, printing one file too soon after another causes a “not
enough memory to print” error and you have to wait and try again. Well,
I discovered today that if you grab several files together and drop them
on the printer driver icon, they print off, one after the other, without
so much as a hesitation. I wish someone had told me before!!!!!!!
8.9
Ed.
8.9
More uses for the serial port − One of the pieces of software built into
the A-Link is the terminal software which could be used to receive the
debugging data, described by John West above, on a Pocket Book.
8.9
I find this combination useful for another task as well. There are at
least two PD applications which allow you to set up a task window (as
you get from ctrl-f12) which takes input from, and outputs to, the
serial port, which means I can run command line utilities without taking
up desktop space, and even if someone else is using the computer for
other tasks.
8.9
Matthew Hunter, NCS
8.9
Printing from text editors − Contrary to Matthew’s comments (Archive 8.8
pp28/29), in my experience, Edit does print in response to <print> but
Zap does not. Dragging the file-save icon to the printer icon does work
with both packages. I will stick well clear of <shift-print>, however.
Zap prints a black (NOT blank) page!
8.9
There remains one problem, however, which is common to Edit and Zap. If
the document contains a line of text which is too long to fit on one
line, it is truncated! This did not happen before I upgraded to RISC OS
3 Laser Direct and Printers 1.22. Previously, Edit inserted a CR/LF to
print the rest of the line (I did not have Zap then).
8.9
Colin Singleton, Sheffield
8.9
Risc PC Apps directory − As Keith Hodge has pointed out in his excellent
Risc PC column, the correct place to add applications into ‘Apps’ on the
iconbar is in !Boot.Choices.Boot.PreDeskTop, by adding lines such as:
8.9
AddApp adfs::HardDisc4.$.Utilities.!ArcFS
8.9
You may have noticed that the first line of this section reads:
8.9
AddApp Boot:^.Apps.!*
8.9
which displays any application, i.e. a directory whose filename begins
with a ‘!’. This means that any normal directory whose filename does not
begin with a ‘!’ will not be displayed inside Apps on the iconbar. So,
if there are any applications there which you never use, you could place
them in a directory (called ‘Not Needed’ say) and they will not be
displayed, although they are still accessible through Apps on the hard
disc.
8.9
The converse of this is that lines such as that given above for adding
applications into Apps need not, in fact, be placed in the file
PreDesktop − they can be anywhere. Therefore, you can have a small Obey
file which adds a selection of your favourite applications at any time.
This saves cluttering up the Apps directory display with everything you
might conceivably need until you actually need it, and it saves on
memory and time taken to Boot the machine, as the !boot files of your
chosen applications are not run, and their sprites are not loaded, until
you choose to add them to Apps by using your Obey file.
8.9
Matthew Hunter, NCS
8.9
Risc PC audio expansion − The audio header required by the audio mixer
for the Cumana Indigo CD-ROM drive, and the identical Acorn and ESP 16-
bit sound upgrades, is link 14 which was not fitted on some early
machines. The link is located at the top right corner of the motherboard
if you are looking at the machine from the front. It is a row of five
pins, with links connecting 1-2 and 2-4. Pin one is closest to the back
of the machine. If this link is not fitted, get in contact with Granada
who will replace your motherboard for one fitted with the correct
connector. Currently, the Cumana and 16-bit upgrades are mutually
exclusive, but ESP are working on an audio mixer to enable the 16-bit
sound and CD sound from any CD-ROM drive to be combined.
8.9
Matthew Hunter NCS
8.9
Risc PC font size − There was a request in Archive 8.8 p38 regarding the
font size for the outline font used in place of the system font. Full
details are given on pages 220 and 221 of Volume 5 of the RISC OS 3
PRM’s, but the following example Obey file will demonstrate the method.
It should be placed in the PreDesk directory of the !Boot sequence.
8.9
configure wimpfont 0
8.9
set wimp$font Trinity.Medium.Italic
8.9
set wimp$fontsize 192
8.9
set wimp$fontwidth 160
8.9
The last two lines allow you to alter the height and width of the font,
as desired.
8.9
It will only have an effect on text which an application regards as
system text − an application which uses its own fonts in icons will not
be affected.
8.9
David Springle, Cheshire
8.9
Window behaviour − I found that, when two windows containing a word
processor are open, it is possible to scroll one window and
simultaneously type into the other window. Further investigation has
shown that it is possible to do this with Zap (v. 1.20), Edit (v. 1.50),
Desk Edit (v. 3.00) and Publisher (v. 4.01). These are the only ‘word
processors’ (for want of a better collective name) I have access to. It
is also possible to mix the WPs in the windows, e.g. the scrolling
window could contain a Publisher document and the typing window could
contain a Zap page. This only breaks down with Edit as the scrolling
window. When the Edit window is scrolled, this becomes the active window
and typing is not possible in the other window. (Why? Can it be
changed?).
8.9
Dave Livsey, Devon
8.9
Window behaviour II − Usually, if you have clicked on a window titlebar
(using select), to move it, or bring it to the front of the window
stack, processing will continue in the background − this can be seen by
having !Alarm counting seconds on the iconbar. If the window you are
using has a pane attached, however, you will find that the processing
stops. This is because clicking on the titlebar brings the window to the
front of the window stack, and the application then brings the pane to
the front. The window holding the pane is then no longer at the front,
and the WIMP tries to bring it to the front again, and so on. Using
<adjust> does not have the same effect, since it does not try to alter
the order of the windows.
8.9
Matthew Hunter, NCS
8.9

8.9
Risc PC Column
8.9
Keith Hodge
8.9
Software information
8.9
You may remember that I commented in the April column, that my existing
version of Euclid did not work on the Risc PC. The good news is that Oak
Solutions will upgrade yours for you, free of charge, to version 2.19
(09-Apr-92), provided that you send the usual stamped and addressed
return label. The software now works well, with no problems encountered.
8.9
Euclid was a program ahead of its time when it was released back in
198x, and it still is a very versatile 3D composition tool, with the
ability to animate the resultant images, which greatly aids the
visualisation of objects. I even used it to produce the animated title
sequence for the Welsh Language S4C television programme “Triongle”, as
the £12,000 graphics system that was in use in the studio at that time
could not do this!
8.9
Software compatibility
8.9
There is a very pleasant reduction to zero this month in the number of
programs reported not to be working on the Risc PC. Software writers are
obviously getting to grips with the new machine and its operating
system.
8.9
Hardware and software news
8.9
Some time ago, I mentioned that I had found a problem with the serial
port, where data ceased to flow when <select> was held down on the title
bar of a window − as if you were about to move the window. A subscriber
(whose name I have lost − please drop me a line) rang to advise that the
problem is only present on windows which have a tool pane, and is caused
by the OS getting in a loop. The problem does not occur when <adjust> is
used, as the Window Manager does not try to change the depth of the
window on screen, and so the loop is not entered.
8.9
The effect can readily be seen by having the clock running on the icon
bar with the seconds hand (or seconds digits) displayed. The clock stops
when <select> is held down on the title bar. This, of course, means that
all multitasking has ceased and explains why the serial port locks. Does
this also explain the dropped characters I have experienced sometimes?
This is one for Acorn’s OS update list.
8.9
A further point of interest here is that Style stops the clock when
<select> is used on its title bar(!) and yet there is no obvious tool
pane as per Multistore. The fact is, of course, that the button bar of
Style must, in effect, be a permanently attached tool pane.
8.9
(If you want to see this effect, try it with Draw with the tools shown
or not shown, using <select> or <adjust>. This, apparently, is a known
‘feature’ of RISC OS. See “Window Behaviour II in H & T above. Ed.)
8.9
Those of you thinking of getting a CD-ROM drive might like to consider
the caddy question. This is an area which requires careful consideration
before a purchase is made. Drives which have a caddy can be mounted
horizontally or vertically, as the disc is retained in the caddy.
8.9
There is, however, a considerable cost penalty (at approximately £4 per
extra caddy) with these drives, in that you really need a caddy for each
of your frequently-used discs, because it is quite a performance getting
the discs into and out of the caddy. Non-caddy drives, however, can only
be mounted horizontally, but disc changing is very quick (just like an
audio CD player).
8.9
(Apparently, several CD drive manufacturers have stopped making caddy-
loading drives. However, I gather that they are working on a system
whereby the CD is held in place with a clip, so that the drive can be
vertically mounted. If anyone has any information, please let us know.
Ed.)
8.9
A number of subscribers have commented on the high cost of getting a
full Multimedia Windows setup operational on the Risc PC. It seems to me
that the problem is that of trying to add the PC bits to the Risc PC,
whereas we should be looking for Acorn to produce transparent loaders,
such as those supplied by Computer Concepts for graphics images in
Impression, etc.
8.9
For instance, when you click on a Wave file on a PC CD disc, the OS
should know about the .WAV extension, immediately load a utility and
convert the file to the appropriate Acorn filetype and pass it on via
wimp$scrap to the relevant application. The same should happen with
graphics files, films, etc. This would, of course, further increase the
outstanding flexibility already provided by the machine.
8.9
(I have to laugh at work, watching people trying to get a JPEG file on
screen. I took my machine into work one day to demonstrate what a true
multitasking/object-orientated filing system allows. There was a very
loud silence when I demonstrated how a file, when clicked upon, caused
the machine to load an application and display the graphics file, no
matter which format it was in. When I demonstrated OLE and <ctrl-C>
passing of graphics images / text files, I was told to take it home! I
may add at this point, that the telemetry manager has now stopped taking
the mickey out of “non standard” Acorn machines. You should try it
yourself some time.)
8.9
Comments of the month
8.9
(1) A big thank you to Dave Willington, Bob Ames and Derrick Porter for
all the very useful information on Family History which they were good
enough to send me. Dave Willington commented that there was no sign of
the program “Family” on the monthly disc, which I guess was so full that
Paul was unable to fit it in. I have submitted it again!
8.9
(2) I have read of all sorts of problems with dongles / special leads
(poor old CC!), but I must say I have never had a problem with my Turbo
Drivers on the Archimedes or on my new Risc PC. I also firmly believe in
them, as they are the only way that software can be made safe from
piracy. The only thing I feel should be provided is two dongles when you
purchase for your company, so that you can use it on your machine at
home in the evening.
8.9
Request of the month
8.9
From Tony: I would like to use the Slideshow application provided with
the Risc PC to display my own digitised images. Using ChangeFSI to
convert the images to 768×512, as required by Slideshow, would be much
easier if you had a screen mode of this size available on the desktop,
as you can then simply select “scale to fill xxxx yyyy”, where xxxx yyyy
is updated by ChangeFSI when you select a screen mode.
8.9
The problem? This is not provided by the AKF85 monitor script. Has
anybody produced a suitable definition? I seem to remember that Arthur
Taylor was very good at monitor scripts − any chance you could produce
this, please, Arthur?
8.9
Tailpiece
8.9
As usual, I can be contacted by letter at the HES address on the back
page, by telephone after 7p.m., or by Packet Radio from anywhere in the
world, as GW4NEI@GB7OAR.#16.GBR.EU. u
8.9

8.9
Cannon Fodder
8.9
Dave Wilcox
8.9
This is one of the latest games added to the impressive collection of
Krisalis Software. The game was first seen, to the best of my knowledge,
on the Amiga format, and has now been adapted for the Archimedes. The
conversion is excellent − nothing seems to have been lost in graphic or
sound quality − 10 out of 10!
8.9
The package
8.9
The game comes on three discs in a sparse cardboard box with a 16-page,
A5 manual. The manual is probably one of the best I have read to date,
being written in a very relaxed manner and covering every aspect of the
game. The game is started with the usual double click on the game icon
on disc one, and other discs are prompted as required. If you have the
space, you can install the game onto your hard disc with no trouble (2Mb
of space needed), and no key disc is required to run the game.
8.9
The game
8.9
Once run, the game goes through a collection of introduction screens,
with a good musical backing. This can be bypassed by a mouse click. The
first game screen is Boot Hill. You have 360 eager conscripts ready and
willing to do battle for you. Of these, you can only have 15 volunteers
per mission. The game has 24 missions which are split up into different
numbers of phases, the maximum being six.
8.9
Each phase begins with the set number of volunteers being admitted into
the war zone, the object being to kill the enemy and/or destroy their
buildings. To move around, you point the mouse to where you wish your
troops to move, and click the left mouse button. They will immediately
start to make their way to this point. The right hand mouse button is
the fire button − push this and the whole troop fires towards the
pointer, anything in the path of fire will obviously die. The enemy
troops are programmed intelligently and will move around and fire on
your troops, so life is not too easy for you.
8.9
As the game progresses, you will find boxes of grenades or bazookas.
Your troops will carry these away with them and can then use them to
destroy enemy buildings, vehicles or troops. Don’t be fooled into
thinking that you are given an advantage though, because the enemy also
has access to the same weapons, and they are normally a bit quicker in
their use.
8.9
Once the objective of a mission is achieved, you exit the war zone with
a little dance from the victorious troops. The next screen is in
commemoration for those lost in battle, with a scrolling list of names.
This is followed by the list of victor’s names and their subsequent
promotions. It is then back to Boot Hill, where a cross is erected for
every loss, and the next mission is ready to go. The victors go on,
accompanied by new recruits to make up the necessary numbers. Whilst at
Boot Hill, you can save your progress to a specially formatted disc or
straight to hard disc for easy return at a later date.
8.9
This is not just a simple shoot-em-up type game because you can
incorporate a fair degree of strategy by breaking your squad into
smaller teams with each one designated a different job. As an example,
you can set up crossfire, or have covering fire from a point of cover.
8.9
There are different terrains for the missions, ranging from Jungle to
Arctic scenarios. These are the ones I’ve come across so far but,
apparently, there are also Desert, Moors and Underground areas. As the
game progresses, you also come across various types of vehicles,
choppers, tanks, jeeps, skidoos, and artillery guns. Some of these are
equipped with armaments, while others are just for transport. All are at
your disposal if you’re good enough.
8.9
The verdict
8.9
I have no doubt at all that someone somewhere will find the topic of
this game offensive, but I think they will be missing one vital point −
it is a game − and, in my humble opinion, a good one. This game is now
installed on my hard disc and, I have to admit, is played in most spare
moments. The graphics are excellent, sound is good, game control is
excellent and some of the scenarios are very testing, and certainly keep
your attention and interest. A very good game, worth every penny.
8.9
Cannon Fodder costs £24 through Archive or £25.99 through other
outlets. u
8.9

8.9
Impressive
8.9
Gabriel Swords
8.9
Impressive is a neat little utility from the makers of Keystroke − that
much vaunted ‘macro maker’ used extensively by our very own editor.
Impressive is a read-only version of Keystroke, designed to take the
effort out of setting up the macros yourself. It works on Impression
Style, Publisher and Publisher Plus.
8.9
What is a macro?
8.9
A macro is made up of a series of actions, which are ‘recorded’ in a
particular order. They are then ‘played back’ automatically, in the
given order, to execute a desired process. For example, using menus to
set a border in Impression requires a number of actions. First, you must
click on <menu>; then you move down to ‘frame’; then across and down to
‘Alter Frame’. Once inside the dialogue box, you click on View; then you
choose the border frame you require. Press <return> or <OK> and the
frame is set. In Keystroke, you can set up and save a macro which
follows and records all those movements. So, in future, if you want to
set that particular border, you simply playback your saved macro. In
Impressive, all that recording is done for you.
8.9
Enter the button bar
8.9
When you load Impressive, you get a ‘button bar’ of pre-defined macros,
all ready for you to use. Among the preset macros is the ability to
change, automatically, the colour of text, borders and backgrounds; you
can rotate or change the attributes of graphic frames and their
contents; you can change borders; create new frames to preset sizes; you
can automatically turn off text repel or set a frame to transparent.
There are, in fact, 80 preset operations included on the button bar,
with some spare places so that you can add to the selection.
8.9
You can even drag an Application icon to an empty button. Impressive
remembers where the application is, and loads it for you when you click
the button. In this way, it saves you ferreting around in directories to
find the application you’re looking for. You can do the same with
sprites and drawfiles. This time you put a copy of the file you want
onto an empty button, and when clicked upon, it will load that image
into a selected frame.
8.9
And that’s not all; if the presets are not quite what you want, you can
change them. For example, if the preset frame is too small, you can make
it bigger. If you don’t like the cyan values of the colours that appear
on the bar, you can change them. If you don’t like the button bar
sitting horizontally across your screen, you can change it to hang
vertically. What you can’t do is set up a completely new macro − you
need Keystroke for that.
8.9
In operation
8.9
When you click on a button, you actually see the sequence of operations
on screen, so, for example, you see a frame dialogue window open and
boxes ticked or un-ticked, figures entered or erased. It’s exactly what
you would have to do, only it does it faster.
8.9
Niggles?
8.9
There aren’t any serious ones. I would have liked to have seen a bit
more information in the manual about changing the settings of the pre-
defined files. To change the setting, you actually have to find your way
inside the button bar application. The manual doesn’t tell you how to do
this − it assumes you already know. Now, most people probably do know,
but a mention of ‘shift-double-click’ might have helped. Once inside,
there are useful help files which tell you what to do, so it shouldn’t
be too difficult once you find your way in.
8.9
The other slightly annoying thing is that when you remove an icon from
the button bar, the rest don’t shunt up and fill the gap, it just stays
empty. This is fine if you only remove one or two, but if you remove a
lot, it leaves lots of gaps. The only way to avoid this is by completely
rearranging the bar from inside the button bar application window − not
difficult, and maybe for only £10 you shouldn’t expect anything else!
8.9
Conclusion
8.9
So, would I use it? I would − I do! I’ve cut my version down to my 20
most used operations; that way I don’t have another icon bar stretching
right across the screen. My feeling is, that once you’ve used the button
bar you’ll wonder how you got on without it − then you’ll want to go all
the way and buy Keystroke!
8.9
Impressive costs £9.95 inclusive from Quantum software or £10 through
Archive. u
8.9

8.9
HolyBible − Part 2
8.9
Gabriel Swords
8.9
Last month we had a look at some of the things HolyBible can do. This
month we’ll look at base resources (which I missed last time), some new
features, including more powerful search operations, the problems with
copyright and, finally, some hints and tips.
8.9
Base resources
8.9
Base resources are accessible from Open on the icon bar menu. When you
open resources you get another window on the screen, showing just which
resources are available to which verses. At the moment, there are only a
limited number of resources and they are really only there for
demonstration purposes, but when you see them, you begin to realise just
how useful they could be. For licensing reasons, most resources are
going to be ‘read only’ − so you can’t export the text to your favourite
word processor and use them as the basis for your very own Bible
dictionary!
8.9
Included with the base pack are study notes from the NRSV on Genesis 1.
There is also an index of verses to which various resources are
attached. For example, double-clicking on 1 Kings 6:1 brings up a
commentary on 1 Kings chapters 6 and 7, the building of the first temple
of Solomon. Clicking on Exodus 39:1 brings up some notes on the High
Priest’s clothes; there are a larger number of notes on the Ark of the
Covenant attached to a number of Old Testament verses.
8.9
As well as the written resources, there are a number of pictorial ones.
There is, for example, a drawfile showing what the Ark of the Covenant
might have looked like, plus some maps of Old and New Testament
Palestine (see overleaf). Attached to Romans 6:1 there’s a sprite of an
open air baptism in Tavistock. Although these files can’t be dragged
directly to other applications, they can be opened and then re-saved
elsewhere.
8.9
The style and complexity of written resources will vary according
ExpLAN’s target audience. With the schools pack, for example, there
could be three levels of information, depending on the course an
individual is following − the higher the course, the deeper the
information will go. But, because of the different approaches †SACREs
have to RE, they have no plans to supply school worksheets, etc. Rather,
they hope that, by providing the raw data, teachers will be able to
produce their own.
8.9
†SACRE = Standing Advisory Committee for RE!
8.9
Once the Resource Building Utility is released, you will be able to
create your own set of resources, with pictures, drawings and maybe even
video; and you’ll be able to create your own indices on any number of
subjects. ExpLAN have plans to release their own resource packs later in
the year and, of course, anyone else could produce their own set of
notes and references, worksheets or resource packs to sell or share.
8.9
Are there any drawbacks? Funnily enough, two criticisms I was about to
mention have already been fixed in version 1.2. The first was about the
index of references; in version 1.0 they were placed in the order in
which they were made. HolyBible now has an internal pre-sort routine
which will re-order the references in Canonical Book order. Secondly,
just as I was about to say how nice it would be have an icon on the tool
bar for resources, out comes a new version with a resources icon on the
tool bar − how’s that for service?
8.9
Good news on searching
8.9
I said last month that phrase-searching isn’t easy in HolyBible, and it
isn’t − at least not yet. But as part of the first upgrade (which they
plan to send out to registered users with the printed manual), phrase-
searching will be included. In the meantime, if you want to search for a
phrase, you will have to use the ‘AND’ criteria. In this way, you can
search for ‘in the beginning’ by asking for ‘in’ AND ‘the’ AND
‘beginning’. It isn’t very elegant and, of course, you will get a lot of
phrases you didn’t want, but you will at least get the ones you do want.
8.9
With the search options, you will get a new menu called Search Mode.
This allows you to choose a Word Search, Phrase Search or Proximity
Search. I can’t tell you exactly how the new search mode works in
practice, but from the manual, it seems that you will be able to specify
different ways of searching for a particular phrase. For example, ‘Son
of Man’ (entered: Son AND of AND Man) − in word search mode, it will
register every verse where the three words occur, no matter in what
order. In phrase-search, it will bring out only those verses where ‘Son
of Man’ occurs as a complete phrase. By inserting wild cards, you can
collect different occurrences of ‘son of man’. For example, son AND of
AND * AND * AND man − this time you get ‘son of a valiant man’. If you
don’t want to use wild cards you could specify how many intervening
words are allowed within a verse. For example, if your search criteria
was ‘Son’ AND ‘of’ AND ‘Man’ and you set Words in Between to 2, you
would get both ‘son of man’ and ‘son of a valiant man’. What you are
doing in this mode is allowing the search a certain latitude − so it
will find the exact phrase as well as those which approximate to the
phrase − in the present example, with up to two different words in
between.
8.9
Finally, by setting a Proximity Search, you could look for son of man
over a specified number of verses, with the words appearing in any
order. But even more useful is the ability to find words in ‘loose’
translations where the verses might have been combined, or, for locating
topics that span several verses, such as ‘baptism’ AND ‘sin’ OR
‘forgiveness’.
8.9
Two other new functions included with the next release are the abilities
to run paragraphs together when exporting, and to export single words.
8.9
Mutterings
8.9
There have been one or two unholy mutterings about HolyBible. For
example: 1. Some people don’t like the idea that you can’t select and
export a whole chapter or book in one go. 2. Instead of being able to
export parts of verses, you have export the whole verse and delete the
bits you don’t want. 3. Resources are, on the whole, ‘read only’ − you
can’t copy, add to or amend them. 4. When you export a verse, you only
get an abbreviated form of the book reference (version 1.2 will allow
full or abbreviated book names), etc.
8.9
There are always reasons for possible shortcomings in any program, and
not all of them are the fault of the programmer! In the case of
HolyBible, some of the problems are technical (as with partial verse
exporting), some are to do with licensing (copying chunks of resources,
or pages of a copyright translation), and some are just not worth
worrying about, at least not for the time being!
8.9
Of course, as we have already seen, some shortcomings are being dealt
with. ExpLAN seem to be very flexible and will respond positively to
suggestions for change − where they can.
8.9
BUT, there are some things they can’t alter. One of the problems that
the authors have come up against is the copyright of Bible translations.
Because some translations may have three claimants to any royalties, the
hedges that have to be built around the system to protect these claims,
can be high. They, too, are eager to comply fully with publishers’
wishes. In this way, by establishing a reputation for safeguarding the
rights of others, they hope to persuade other quality publishers to ‘get
on board’. In the short-term, this might make using some of the
HolyBible options frustrating but, in the long-term, by increasing the
availability of other material, it should reap benefits for everyone.
8.9
Another reason for the so-called shortcomings is the fact that HolyBible
is designed with the ‘computer illiterate’ very much in mind. You don’t
have to have a degree in C or C++ (whatever they are) to be able to
operate this piece of software. Inevitably, there has to be a trade off
between making the interface accessible to everyone, while making it
powerful enough to satisfy the ‘power-users’. For me, HolyBible strikes
a good balance between the two. Remember that this is the first version
of the software, and not everything has been released yet! The
philosophy ExpLAN have is to provide up-to-date, relevant material of a
high quality.
8.9
In the pipeline...
8.9
Coming up over the next few months are a number of Bible translations,
including a Hebrew Bible with correct right reading text. Also coming is
the NRSV Bible with study notes, Russian, German and Greek translations,
plus a Bible Dictionary. There are also some resources coming and a
schools’ pack. Other developments still at the early stage of licensing
can’t be mentioned yet − but we’ll keep you in touch as news filters
through...
8.9
Something to try
8.9
With a Hebrew Bible linked to an English Bible, it would be possible to
search for a particular Hebrew word, tracking it through the Hebrew
Bible, while at the same time seeing how it’s translated into English.
That could be quite useful for a Bible study! And with the ability to
export single words, quoting Hebrew in other documents will be much
simplified.
8.9
Hints & Tips
8.9
Exporting text − When exporting text from HolyBible into Impression, I
suggest that you use an intermediate ‘template’ document. There are two
reasons for this. First of all, you may not like the style definitions
that ExpLAN have provided. So, in this dummy document, you can edit the
definitions to taste. Then, as you export the DDF text into that
document, it will take on your own style definitions. The second reason
is that when you export some DDF text, it brings with it thirteen style
definitions. When I want to quote a single verse in the God-slot, I
don’t want the Archive magazine style-sheet clogged up with all of those
styles, so I drop the DDF text into the dummy document. I then mark the
text <ctrl-A>, copy it and paste it into the God-slot. That way, it only
brings with it the styles it actually uses.
8.9
HolyBible problem − Has HolyBible hung up on you? It has stiffed my
machine twice now and both times it occurred when I was marking some
text ready for export. Now I know that this isn’t a statistically
significant sample(!) but I wonder if anyone else has had similar
problems? I was working on a 10Mb Risc PC and (I think) the only other
applications I had running at the time were Impression, Edit and
Keystroke. If you get hang-ups too, please report them to Gabriel,
giving as much detail as possible: what machine? memory configuration?
other applications running? what you were doing at the time? etc.
8.9
Paul Beverley, NCS u
8.9

8.9
What the Ark of the Covenanent might have looked like
8.9
Floopy
8.9
Simon Weaver
8.9
Floopy is a smallish, greyish creature who has the task of clearing your
screen of apples, ice-creams and helmets (!). Yes, it is another classic
and “easy-to-understand, collect-the-goodies and avoid-the-nasties”
game. The nasties themselves come in different flavours too, including
bees and strange ghostly white penguins. There are 40 levels, and all
can be jumped to if you have the correct password. The music is quite
catchy, but it can be turned off if you get tired of it.
8.9
There’s nothing too new here, but Floopy brings together elements from
other similar games and mixes them up quite well. I did like the
interesting ‘hedgehog’ type rolling that you have, and the way you can
disappear off any side of the screen and reappear at the other − pacman
style. As you move through the levels, the author introduces new
elements to the game and soon you will be happily crushing penguins up
against the wall, and destroying ice blocks to help you get to the
‘goodies’.
8.9
Floopy can almost get quite addictive at times, but it is very easy to
forget to write down the password and have to go back to the last level
whose code you can remember. You also have to wait twenty seconds for
the introductory sequence before you can continue and this was usually
enough to put me off another go. I also found it immensely frustrating
that it is quite easy to get yourself stuck going round in circles
sometimes, and only losing all your lives can save you. I found the game
a bit slow on an ARM 2, and a bit too fast with ARM 3 − but then some
people are never satisfied. I can only guess that ARM 250 is about
right, the Risc PC being sufficiently incompatible to require an
upgrade. Floopy has been out for over a year now, and isn’t one to try
and impress your PC friends with, although its very low price (£3.49)
shows it wasn’t intended to fit this role anyway. Hopefully, a doubling
in price with the upgrade should give you some good improvements. You
can’t expect a massively exciting end sequence with Floopy, but you
could always reward yourself with another go...
8.9
I wouldn’t say Floopy is the best Soft Rock game ever, and it may be
worth checking out some of their later releases. Floopy is quite fun,
but that’s it with the current version. There isn’t anything very new or
impressive, but the puzzles are nice and easy and the ‘baddies’
sufficiently unpredictable for a couple of hours of mindless gratuitous
ice-cream collecting.
8.9
Floopy costs £3.49 from Soft Rock Software. u
8.9

8.9
Shareholder Professional
8.9
Dave Wilcox
8.9
Shareholder is produced by Silicon Vision Ltd and currently exists in
two versions, Releases 2 and 3. Release 2 is aimed at the small investor
and R3 at the larger investor. I have been looking at version 3.17 which
has the following additions over Release 2:
8.9
u Share Trends
8.9
u Retail Price Index
8.9
u General Market Prices
8.9
u Links to Ceefax, Teletext and Prestel via Teletext adaptor or Modem
for auto updates to current share prices.
8.9
Apart from these differences, the two programs are very much the same.
If, as your portfolio grows, you decide you require R3, Silicon Vision
will upgrade for the difference in cost. Current pricings from Silicon
Vision are R2 at £79.95 and R3 at £125, both prices including VAT.
8.9
So what is Shareholder? The claim is that this is a “sophisticated
relational database program for RISC OS. Its function is to store
information on stocks and shares as you wheel and deal. It is capable of
giving you a graphical display of past share prices, forecasts,
portfolio values and dividend lists”. Does it fulfil these claims? Let’s
see.
8.9
The package
8.9
This program is presented in a video-style box and consists of one 3½“
floppy disc and an A5, 36-page manual. On the disc is the Shareholder
program, System, demo files and a ReadMe file with any updates or
pertinent information available since the last printing of the manual.
The manual is clear and concise and covers all required points.
8.9
There is no copy protection other than a coded serial number within the
program, so back up or hard disc installation is trouble-free. For hard
disc use, you simply select and drag to the required destination
directory. All the files listed above take up 268Kb, so there is ample
space available on one floppy disc for most users, if this media is
preferred.
8.9
The program
8.9
To run the program, simply double click on the application to load it
onto the icon bar. Once it is loaded, you have the usual menu options
from the icon − info and quit are self-explanatory, and the other
option, ‘windows’, gives a submenu showing the names of any files
loaded, as this program is capable of working on multiple files. If you
wish, as you start to use this software, you can use the interactive
help system supplied with RISC OS to help you on your way.
8.9
Initially, you have only one file available, ‘Demo’. So to start, you
can load ‘Demo’ in any of the usual ways, double click or select and
drag. You can, of course, jump straight in and create your own
portfolio. To create a new file, simply click on the icon on the
iconbar.
8.9
If you load an existing file, you are presented with a summary of your
portfolio showing the Share/Company name, the amount invested, the
current value and any gain or loss made on these shares. At the bottom
of this window is a Portfolio Total giving you, at a glance, the Total
Value and Total Gain for your investments. If you are setting up a new
portfolio, you are presented with a company sheet, initially nominated
as page 1. This sheet is where you enter the details of the company
name, the quantity of shares purchased, the date of purchase and the
cost. You will need to create one of these pages for each company for
which you own shares.
8.9
Once your portfolio has been created, you update each company sheet with
all transaction details and dividend payout details as and when you make
them. As the data is entered, all other aspects relating to this
information are updated by the software, so portfolio maintenance is
very quick and easy, with the current status only a button push away at
all times. Whenever you subsequently load your portfolio file, you
obtain the summary sheet for your investments. It is from this summary
window that all the work is done to your portfolio. Pressing <menu> over
this window allows you access to the available tools, company pages and
facilities via the main menu.
8.9
Most of these options are obvious and do what they say. There are a
couple which go a little deeper. The first of these is ‘Misc’. This has
two sections, the first of which is concerned with the display order for
the summary sheet. The sort can be by name, by alias or by sheet number.
(The alias name is that used by the auto update system, e.g. Prestel).
The second section is relative to the gain calculation performed by the
program, with options to include R.P.I. and/or dividends. The gains
value is calculated to a more realistic level, taking into account
dividend income and price increases due to inflation.
8.9
The ‘Tools’ section has two tools, the first of which is a simple
calculator. To all intents and purposes, it is the same as !Calc, but
with one memory.
8.9
The second tool is the calendar. This shows one month at a time with the
tax week number shown down the lefthand side. It is this window where
the R.P.I. is entered. The R.P.I. is published each month and is used in
the calculation to estimate the gain for each transaction.
8.9
With the ‘Print’ option there are three output methods. You can output
to printer using the standard Acorn printer driver. You can send the
file as plain ASCII text or standard highlighted text. If plain ASCII is
selected, the option is available for the resultant text file to be
saved straight into another application by dragging the file icon. If
‘Print’ is selected over a graphic window, the output goes direct to
printer or is saved to disc as a printer output file.
8.9
The ‘Save’ option also has two options. You can save the whole file as a
shareholder datafile, or the whole file can be saved as a CSV file,
which provides a second way of importing your data into another package.
8.9
‘Display’ is the work-horse of this application, enabling you to move
quickly around the available displays. The menu is divided into two main
sections. The top part covers the selection of a page for various
actions: Show/Edit Page, Delete Page, Page History, and Page Forecast.
These four options bring up the same selection window, so that you can
scroll to the required selection. Clicking on this choice will open the
desired company window for you, or you can type the name into the
editable field at the top of the window. The bottom section opens
windows to various parts of the database for quick summaries like Total
Value, Price History, Portfolio History (displayed as a ribbon graph
showing share performance), Portfolio Forecast (an educated estimate of
possible performance − you must update share prices, etc, on a regular
basis for the estimate to be of any use), and a Dividend Listing,
showing all dividends received, the dates paid, tax credits and the
number of shares held.
8.9
If you have access to a teletext adaptor or modem, it is possible to
auto-update share prices on a regular basis. As mentioned above, if you
want to use this facility, the alias section of your Company page should
match the share name used on the information downloaded. It is possible
to use several alias names for each company if required, as this will
enable you to update prices from different sources. Updating your
database is a simple matter of dragging the update information file onto
any of the Shareholder windows.
8.9
Conclusion
8.9
This program is well-written, was easy to set up and use, and has worked
without any problem at all. Not one hang-up!!! The method of
presentation and layout is unusual at first sight. To my eye, some of
the tabulations are out and therefore make some of the tables unsightly.
However, you soon adjust to this, and the main thing is that all the
information required is there and logically displayed. I would recommend
this to all interested parties. u
8.9

8.9
Module Writing
8.9
Nicholas Marriott
8.9
RISC OS provides a simple method of extending the operating system,
using relocatable modules. These are loaded into the RMA and can provide
SWIs and star commands for other programs or the user. They can also
react to messages from the operating system and even run as WIMP tasks
or languages. This article aims to introduce the basic knowledge needed
to write simple modules. More complicated aspects can be covered in a
later article.
8.9
The module header
8.9
The core of a module is its header. This consists of eleven word-length
entries at the start of a module. RISC OS uses this header to call the
module when it is required such as when the user executes one of the
star commands belonging to that module. The header is detailed below:
8.9
  Offset  Type  Description
8.9
  0  offset to code  start code
8.9
  4  offset to code  initialisation code
8.9
  8  offset to code  finalisation code
8.9
  12  offset to code  service call handler
8.9
  16  offset to string  title string
8.9
  20  offset to string  help string
8.9
  24  offset to table  help and command keyword table
8.9
  28  number  SWI chunk number
8.9
  32  offset to code  SWI handler code
8.9
  36  offset to table  SWI decoding table
8.9
  40  offset to code  SWI decoding code
8.9
I will discuss each of these entries in turn.
8.9
Start code
8.9
The start code is used by both WIMP tasks and languages. It allows a
module to be run as an application, but it is, unfortunately, too
complicated to explain in this article.
8.9
Initialisation code
8.9
The initialisation code is called when the module is first started up.
It is typically used to claim workspace. When a module is loaded, it is
allocated a private word in the RMA which is usually used to store a
workspace pointer. The private word pointer is always passed in R12.
This extract shows how a typical initialisation entry might claim
workspace:
8.9
.Initialisation_Code
8.9
STMFD R13!,{r7-r11 ,R14}
8.9
:
8.9
MOV R0,#6    ; reason code 6 - claim RMA
8.9
MOV R3,#1024    ; 1k to be claimed
8.9
SWI “XOS_Module”    ; call OS_Module
8.9
ADRVS R0,bad_claim    ; V set?
8.9
LDMVSFD R13!,{r7-r11 ,R14}  ; if so, exit with an error
8.9
ORRVSS PC,R14,#1<<28
8.9
STR R2,[R12]    ; store workspace pointer in
8.9
:      ; private word
8.9
LDMFD R13!,{r7-r11 ,PC}
8.9
A piece of code within a module (except start code) should not call an
error handler. To produce an error, it is better to exit with V set and
R0 pointing to the error block (as above). SWIs in the module code must
always be the X form so they do not produce errors but and code should
exit with an error if they return V set.
8.9
Finalisation code
8.9
The finalisation entry in a module header is a pointer to the code which
is called when the module is being killed, probably by *RMKill but also
possibly by *RMTidy or OS_Modules 3, 4, 8 and 9. This code should be
used to tidy up ready for the module to be removed. If the private word
is a non-zero value, RISC OS attempts to release the workspace it points
to. When a module returns with V set after this code is called, it is
left in the RMA and the error pointed to by R0 is produced. This is
quite useful if other tasks are still using the module:
8.9
.Finalisation_Code
8.9
STMFD R13!,{r7-r11 ,R14}
8.9
:
8.9
LDR R12,[R12]    ; read workspace pointer
8.9
LDR R0,[R12,#4]    ; read tasks using count
8.9
CMP R0,#0    ; are there none?
8.9
ADRNE R0,inuse_error    ; if not, exit with error
8.9
LDMNEFD R13!,{r7-r11 ,R14}
8.9
ORRNES PC,R14,#1<<28
8.9
:
8.9
LDMFD R13!,{r7-r11 ,PC}
8.9
:
8.9
.inuse_error  EQUD   0
8.9
    EQUS   “Some applications are still using this module.”
8.9
    EQUB  0
8.9
Service calls
8.9
Service calls are messages passed around by the operating system or
other modules when a noticeable event occurs. The service call code is
called when a service call is received, with the number of the service
call in R1. Service calls can be claimed by a module, meaning that the
module is going to act on that service call and does not want it to be
passed on to other modules. There are far too many service calls to
describe them all here, but these are a few of the more useful ones:
8.9
Name                              Number  Function
8.9
Service_Error  &06  Called when an error has occurred, R0=pointer to
error block.
8.9
    MUST NOT BE CLAIMED
8.9
Service_NewApplication  &2A  Called when a new application has started,
set
8.9
    R1 to zero to prevent new application starting.
8.9
Service_ModeChange  &46  Called when there is a mode change.
8.9
    MUST NOT BE CLAIMED
8.9
You can also send your own service calls using SWI OS_ServiceCall, R1
must point to the service number and R2-R8 can point to any data
required. If the service call is claimed, R1 is returned as zero,
otherwise it is preserved.
8.9
Title string
8.9
The title string offset points to a null-terminated string for the
module title (used by *Modules).
8.9
Help string
8.9
The help string, used by *Help is a null-terminated string in this
format:
8.9
  Module name <Tab> v.vv (dd mmm yyyy)
8.9
for example:
8.9
  EQUS “TestMod”+CHR$(9)+“1.04 (”+MID$(TIME$,5,11)+“)”
8.9
Help and command keyword table
8.9
This is a list of star commands in the following format:
8.9
  Null-terminated command name, word-aligned
8.9
  Offset to command code
8.9
  Information word
8.9
  Offset to syntax message, null-terminated
8.9
  Offset to help text, null-terminated
8.9
The information word contains four bytes:
8.9
 Byte  Description
8.9
    0  Minimum number of parameters (0-255)
8.9
    1  OS_GSTrans map for first eight parameters
8.9
    2  Maximum number of parameters
8.9
    3  Flags:   bit 31 = command is a filing system command
8.9
    bit 30 = command is a *Configure command
8.9
    bit 29 = Help offset points to code not string
8.9
Of these only bytes 0 and 2 are really useful, which are the minimum and
maximum number of parameters respectively. The others should be left at
zero. When entering command code, R0 points to the command code and R1
to the number of parameters.
8.9
SWIs
8.9
Four entries in the module header are used for SWIs, but only three of
these are really needed. The SWI decoding code is quite complicated and
so it is omitted here − it is not usually needed anyway. The first entry
is quite simple; it is a number which is used as a base for the SWI
numbers to continue from. For example, the WIMP’s SWI chunk is &400C0,
thus Wimp_Initialise is SWI &400C0, Wimp_CreateWindow is SWI &400C1 and
so on.
8.9
SWI handler code
8.9
The SWI handler code is called whenever one of the module’s SWIs is
called. The recommended Acorn code for handling this is as follows:
8.9
  .SWI_Handler_Code
8.9
  LDR R12,[R12]    ; get workspace pointer
8.9
  CMP R11,#(SWIs_End-SWIs_Start)/4
8.9
  ADDCC PC,PC,R11,LSL#2    ; dispatch if in range
8.9
  B UnknownSWI
8.9
  .SWIs_Start
8.9
  B SWI_00
8.9
  B SWI_01
8.9
  ........
8.9
  B SWI_nn
8.9
  .SWIs_End
8.9
  :
8.9
  .UnknownSWI
8.9
  ADR R0,UnknownSWI_Error
8.9
  ORRS PC,R14,#1<<28
8.9
  :
8.9
  .UnknownSWI_Error
8.9
  EQUD &1E6
8.9
  EQUS “Unknown <module> operation”
8.9
  EQUB 0
8.9
This code simply checks to see if the SWI number is in range. If so, it
calls the SWI and, if not, it produces an error. When the SWI is
entered, R12 is the contents of the module’s private word and R0-R8
contain the data passed to the SWI.
8.9
SWI decoding table
8.9
This is simply a list of SWIs supported by the module. Note that, for
each one in this table, there must also be a branch instruction in the
same position in the SWI handler code. The table consists of the SWI
prefix followed by up to 64 SWI names, e.g.
8.9
  EQUS “Module”  ; SWI prefix
8.9
  EQUB 0
8.9
  EQUS “SWI00”  ; first SWI name
8.9
  EQUB 0
8.9
  ............
8.9
  EQUB 0  ; zero byte to finish table
8.9
So, calling SWI Module_SWI00 would call SWI handler code which would
jump to the required entry.
8.9
Example module
8.9
The very simple example module provided on the monthly disc does three
things:
8.9
− Provides a star command, *SetMode which will set or display the
current mode.
8.9
− Provides three SWIs, Mode_CurrentMode, Mode_Width and Mode_Height, all
of which return     information about the current mode in R0.
8.9
− Produces a beep every time the mode is changed.
8.9
If you have any comments or questions about module writing, please
contact me via the Archive office. u
8.9

8.9
ProArtisan II on CD
8.9
Bob Ames
8.9
ProArtisan II on CD runs best on RISC OS 3.1 or later, but it will run
on RISC OS 2 with a small number of restrictions, such as the radio
buttons, are not being 3D. Clares suggest using a multiscan monitor to
achieve the best results but it is comforting to know that the images
are usually saved in high resolution, even when a low resolution monitor
is being used (say, in mode 15). This means that if the monitor is
upgraded later, the work can be displayed in mode 21 or 28 on a higher
resolution monitor.
8.9
The minimum machine RAM appears to be 2Mb, although some of the images
from the resource discs will not load, even with 2Mb of RAM available.
Usually, several images may be held in memory on a 4Mb machine.
8.9
Loading the application
8.9
The CD version of the program takes a considerable time to load,
compared with the disc version (I borrowed a friend’s copy for
comparison) but that will depend on the speed of your CD drive. However,
this is a small price to pay for the facility to load PhotoCD images
directly into the computer for further manipulation.
8.9
The CD version does not need initialising (the process of registering a
disc with personal details), as the floppy version does, and the program
can still be installed on hard disc as usual, thus avoiding the slowness
of access from CD. Thus the best of both worlds may be had − PhotoCD
working and hard disc speed.
8.9
Documentation
8.9
The manuals for many pieces of kit seem to have been written in
JapFranGlais, translated from the original software developers’ notes,
via American, by a German living in Bromley. However, probably because
Acorn computers are a British phenomenon, the companies writing software
normally have English speaking staff. Clares have produced a fine
example in this manual − it is divided into sections which are short
enough to read in one go, while containing sufficient information on all
features.
8.9
I like the idea (simple in the extreme) of starting each section on odd
numbered pages, so that each starts on the right side of the open book
as you read it. Sometimes this means a blank page on the left but this
is noted as a blank page.
8.9
Especially for people like myself (for whom the little self-adhesive
labels were printed “at the last resort read the manual”), there is a
tutorial early on in the manual − I discovered this because my train was
late, so I had time to read it!
8.9
Seriously, the manual should be read at least as far as the end of the
tutorial section because, although you might not want to make a cube
with a picture of a big cat on each of its faces, the action of doing so
helps the novice user to understand some of the facilities available.
8.9
Images available
8.9
The images on both Resource floppy discs (disc 2 is available free from
Clares on returning the guarantee form!) are stored in the Acorn
!Squashed format, and need unpacking before use. I am used to double-
clicking on the file name to load it, but any squashed file must be
dragged to the ProArtisan icon on the iconbar (or dropped onto an empty
ProArtisan window) to load it. This may seem a small point but it’s
surprising how set in your ways you become!
8.9
To unsquash a file, the application !Squash must first be ‘seen’ and
then the squashed file may be double-clicked. Provided there is enough
room on the disc, an unsquashed copy will be saved. There is a catch
awaiting inexperienced users (but it is documented in the manual). It is
not possible to add or merge images to squashed sprites in the sprite
pool. They must all be unpacked first or they will be replaced by the
new sprites.
8.9
Of course, sprites and drawfiles may be loaded into ProArtisanII. There
are particular procedures to be followed in these translations. There is
a clever converter application included in the package which will enable
ProArtisan, RenderBender and Illusionist files to be converted into
sprites.
8.9
I am used to the question “Do you want to save modified work?”, so I was
surprised not to be challenged when I closed the window on my first
artistic attempts! I went on loading and discarding the example files
from the resources discs and then got the message “insufficient memory”.
Eventually, I realised that the images were still in memory although not
visible on screen. The iconbar menu gives the option of showing each or
all of the files in memory, as well as options for clearing out old
images. Once I got used to this, it was all very logical, but the
differences from my old favourite, PipeDream, continue to disturb me.
8.9
Menu facilities
8.9
Via the !Options package, the menu can be arranged so that little-used
option choices can be “greyed-out” next time the program is run. This is
all well and good but I prefer the PipeDream method of long or short
menus, where the menus themselves are shorter and clutter up the screen
much less. Moreover, this facility is available immediately with
PipeDream.
8.9
Have you got a frisket?
8.9
The ‘frisket’ seems to be a quite complicated thing, especially where
the manual talks about the differences which take place using processes
while the frisket is in operation. So far, I don’t fully appreciate the
use of such facilities! I shall try to remember that the frisket is an
area which cannot be drawn/painted/coloured over − except in exceptions!
8.9
Using the package
8.9
The art package is simplicity itself − select the tool, size it, choose
a colour... and paint! The line drawing tools are quite different from
DrawPlus − but then they would be, wouldn’t they! − I always find it
difficult to use a new package when a previous example is well known.
8.9
It would appear that an additional colour card is essential for
professional working − these are available from CC or State Machine. You
will then have 16.7 million colours to choose from − my local trade
paint shop only has 3000 different colours! However, all the colours are
not available at once − 256 colours are chosen from the total available
and the machine always holds the full 24-bit values and works at the
highest resolution. This means that even without a card or high
resolution monitor, all the files are excellent quality. The only
exception is when the Save As option is used, when the file is saved to
the current settings − to save memory, for example.
8.9
Extra facilities on the CD version
8.9
The CD of pictures which comes with the CD version appears to be a
Cumana product (it’s called the Cumana Photo Album Volume 1), and has 82
pictures on it. These range from steam trains to hang gliders, castles
to freeways, shire horses to seagulls, and five views each from
Scotland and Sydney!
8.9
The neatest feature, which allows a browse through ten of the CD’s
pictures at a time, is called Show CD Album − it’s rather like looking
at a stamp album in which ten pictures are represented on each page.
8.9
Another clever feature, only found on the CD version, is CLIP. If this
is selected before loading a picture, the original appears with a set of
clip lines on it. These can be moved so that only part of the image is
actually loaded for further work, thus saving memory.
8.9
The cost of PhotoCD is unlikely to spoil the chances of this excellent
software doing well. Typically, it appears that 100 images can be stored
on each blank £5 disc. To store each image would cost up to a maximum of
60p a go in high street shops but this cost would be much lower if
batches were done at a time. It would appear best to avoid professional
bureaux with their much higher charges, although the two I contacted
would be prepared to negotiate price if an account were held with them.
This is a similar attitude to that held by conventional photo print/
processing facilities.
8.9
Printing facilities
8.9
I really liked the Printing dialogue by which it is possible to select
which part of the page area is to be printed. The position on the page,
the scale, the size of margins (taken from the current printer driver if
one is loaded) and more, may be altered before printing.
8.9
Any drawbacks?
8.9
The only real fault I could find was with the menu icons. They don’t
really convey function as well as they could. I find difficulty
remembering what some icons stand for, and whether I am expecting a
function or a sub-menu when each is clicked. In particular, the Process
submenu (an Eye for an icon), the Undo (an arrow pointing towards the
zoom scale) are not clear. The Input/Output icon (arrows left and right)
is OK but confusing, and the Zoom Scale bump buttons are not next to the
figures which indicate the current zoom scale, where they should be! The
icon for Sprite Tools (scissors) is fine when the function is
understood.
8.9
Conclusion?
8.9
All in all, this is a very worthwhile package, if a bit slow in loading
from the CD initially.
8.9
ProArtisan II CD costs £160 inc VAT from Clares or £150 through
Archive. u
8.9

8.9
The Time Machine
8.9
Gabriel Swords
8.9
This isn’t a ‘destroy everything in sight’ type of game − brute force
and ignorance are the very least of your worries. What you need is a
brain the size of a planet, the Times crossword mentality and a slightly
out of focus sense of logic... apart from that, the game’s a doddle!
8.9
Time Machine comes from 4th Dimension and is a sequel to the Haunted
House − though you don’t need to have played that game, and any link
between the two is very tenuous anyway. The game starts with the hero of
Haunted House going for a much needed walk; after only three miles of
walking, it appears that his bladder feels the call of the wild, and is
in need of some relief. The good news for said bladder is that our hero
notices a blue box in the distance; relief seems to be at hand! The bad
news is that the blue portaloo won’t open that easily. Normally, a penny
in the slot would do, but not this time; this time you need a simple
password, and the ability to work out a simple fraction. I say ‘simple’.
It’s simple once you’ve worked them out − in fact, once you’ve done
them, you wonder what all the fuss was about. While you’re getting there
though, the entrance exam seems like a nightmare.
8.9
Once inside, you’ll notice a distinct absence of any kind of loo, but
that doesn’t matter because what you do find is that you’ve entered a
time machine. All thoughts of bladder control disappear as you try to
work out how the thing works. And this is the essence of the game −
finding out how things work. There are buttons to push, levers to pull,
doors to open. All you have to do is push the right buttons at the right
times and put the right bits together in the right order. The trick to
this game is to try everything you come across. Touch it, press it, mix
it together with other things... and see what happens.
8.9
As you wander around, inside and outside of the machine, you find
objects of no apparent value − a can of fly spray, a bottle of water, a
potted plant, etc. You’re given written and oral clues, like: ‘this lamp
is like an ear to a blind man’!!! You’re set tasks, such as, “How do you
make a polished ruby using two aluminium cans and a bit of history?” −
easy, once you know how. Answer this, and the many other questions, and
you’re on your way to finding the meaning of life et al.
8.9
Ultimately, what you’re trying to do is rescue someone from a time
vortex. To do this, you must find the six missing pieces of the key of
time. Fair enough! To find the missing pieces, you travel about in time
and space solving the puzzles which lead you to the missing pieces. In
the process, you move through a bit of earth’s pre-history; on to Mars
where you enter an ancient pyramid (or do you?); then to Dune − where
you could easily get lost; on to Automatia where you’ll find some
sorting out to do; you even find yourself in Abbey Road playing around
with CDs.
8.9
As you go, a percentage figure on the icon bar tells you how well (or
not) you’re doing − what you’re aiming for is 100%. By the way, if you
happen to get killed, some smug sounding voice tells you ‘oh dear’ − I
hope this isn’t the voice of the programmer!
8.9
Suggestions for play
8.9
If you have the three necessary skills mentioned earlier, you’ll fly
through this game in about six days − working through the night,
skipping meals and taking time off work. If you don’t have those skills,
you may as well commit suicide now, because the frustration will drive
you to it eventually. Alternatively, you could do what I did, and get
some friends involved. This is not a game for hermits. I had help from a
friend who is a chemistry teacher; a mathematician; my thirteen year old
son; my ten year old daughter; someone else who was playing the game on
his computer (with his friends); and a host of encyclopaedias, ‘A
Thousand-Things-You-Didn’t-Know-About-Everything’-type books, and a
dictionary. The other thing to do is to save everything as you go along,
under different file names; that way, if you make a mistake and lose
something, you can at least go back to where you left off.
8.9
The Time Machine comes on five floppy discs, and you’ll need at least
2Mb of RAM to run it. There are over 2Mb of sampled sounds and 3.25Mb of
sprites, 95% of which are scanned graphics.
8.9
Is it a good game?
8.9
Yes, I suppose it is really − if you don’t mind the frustration, the
headaches, the waking up in the night with another idea that might work.
If you like games to be a challenge, don’t mind being patient, and like
working out problems, then this is a very good game. The sounds and
graphics are just right for the game, and the programmer’s sense of
humour comes through.
8.9
What happens at the very end? ERM!!! I’m not sure − I haven’t quite
finished − maybe in a year or two?
8.9
The Time Machine costs £25.95 from 4th Dimension or £24 through
Archive. u
8.9

8.9
Caxton Press
8.9
Dave Walsh
8.9
Caxton Press from Newman College Software is, first and foremost, a
simple DTP program which allows users to create a newspaper front page
layout on their computer system. As far as I know, it represents the
first conversion from Research Machines to Acorn. For schools who use
both the old RM machines and Acorn RISC OS, this represents a good move,
allowing the same software to be run on different platforms.
8.9
I have been looking at Caxton Press version 1.00a which has been
converted for the A3000 series. The program is not multitasking, and
requires a printer driver to be pre-loaded before it will operate.
Although it will load and run on newer machines, this copy is unable to
print on the new printer drivers, which means that printing must take
place on an A3000 using RISC OS 2.
8.9
The program itself is very simple to use, being based on a single word
menu system. This can either be keyboard or mouse operated. After
choosing whether you wish to work on an old or new piece of work, you
are into the program proper where the ‘layout’ choices are given. Here
you choose to work on the Masthead (newspaper title), Banner (the
headline), Stories, Print out or Saving options. Each of the areas
follow a similar menu structure, with each element reached from a set of
words along the bottom of the screen.
8.9
Twenty six different, bit-mapped fonts have been provided within the
program, with names ranging from Aladdin to Zebra. These are rather nice
for children’s work, allowing a significant visual selection of writing
styles. Small elements, such as the ability to add speech quotes and the
half sign have also been considered, along with rule off thickness and
styles.
8.9
Up to four stories can be written for the page, each with its own
heading. These are numbered on a ‘thumbnail’ of the finished product, so
that the user can decide which story to work on next. As there are two
stories per column, the room for one diminishes as the length of the
other increases. Any spare space is left as a picture frame for later
use. It should be noted, however, that these pictures are placed by the
low-tech method of scissors and glue, after print out! All the elements
of the page are optional so that, for instance, by leaving out the
banner and headline, you can create an inner page layout.
8.9
The documentation is extremely well written, being both thorough and
clear, with examples of newspapers produced. The program is so simple to
operate that most children who are capable of writing a story would be
able to produce a simple newsheet.
8.9
As a program, it would be most beneficial to schools wanting similar
software on their RM and Acorn equipment. It is designed to be simple,
and achieves this aim at the expense of the multitasking environment,
where pictures, text and fonts can be shared between applications.
Obviously, other newspaper creation methods are available on the Acorn
RISC OS machines, but this one successfully presents a simple approach
to the field, whilst removing the need to master RISC OS conventions.
8.9
Caxton Press costs £30 +VAT from Newman Software Ltd u
8.9

8.9
Cable News II
8.9
Ned Abell
8.9
In previous reviews − a good year ago − I’ve mentioned the existence of
Cable News and, indeed, many of you may have already used it. I had an
early review copy, found quite a lot wanting and, having spoken to
Lindis, decided to wait for Cable News II for review. This has been a
long time coming, is an improvement on the original, and has branched
away from being a straight presentation package, becoming more
interactive.
8.9
Originally, you created a series of presentation “Slides”, in an
application called !CableMake, linked them together with effects and
then saved the resultant story in your working directory. When you ran
the second application, !CableView, you were able to see the sequence.
8.9
The new package will now allow you, by clicking on a hot spot, to jump
between slides, forwards and backwards, and thus the sequence could
provide point-of-sale information, interactive town plans, etc, so it
now falls into the category of a multimedia program. Hot spots can also
run other tasks. There is a great improvement in the program here, and
one that will be of use to many who need to present information
publicly.
8.9
As a maker of videos, I’m primarily interested in a tool that will allow
me to caption and title − indeed, I have just used it for a video about
a British Study Centre in France. Previously, the old !CableMake and
!CableView would co-exist on my 4Mb A310; now they are bigger and need
more memory − a 4Mb machine is the minimum requirement for the new
package. I also ran them on a Risc PC, moving slides back to the A310 to
use the genlock.
8.9
The manual is very clear but has no index. The software is sensibly
protected by embedding your details. Example demonstration stories are
provided for both Risc PC and A series machines − on the Archive monthly
disc, if space permits.
8.9
!CableMake
8.9
Slide creation is simple and you can use a window or full screen. A
background is selected and filled with colour, sprite or motif, then a
frame, made into which you drag text (or type it) sprites, replay files
or drawfiles. Here’s one of the strengths of the program in that you use
styles for your text so it’s like any DTP program but, additionally, you
can set shadow and colour. The frames can be filled and bordered with
their own shadow. Thus, for my application, it’s simple to set up a
house style box and a text style, and then put the two together in the
right place on the video picture for captioning. Keeping the box in
place and changing the next slide’s text allows simple animated
captions.
8.9
The first problem was that Cable News does not accept Artworks files, or
JPEGed or GIFed images, so you have to convert everything to sprites or
drawfiles! Whilst !ChangeFSI will help a lot, I think that the lack of
Artworks support is a major omission and one of my complaints about the
earlier package. I’m told that it will be supported in a later release,
and  yet !CableNews is a package that first came on the market in early
1993, and the Artworks viewer is included with many other applications.
It is a de-facto standard. There is no support for Iota Animator files,
although these are fairly new and, again, will have to be catered for.
They can, however, be launched from slides using the hot spot to to run
a task or run a file. The Replay support is fine if you have the means
of making Replay files, but most people don’t. You can import from
PhotoCD because !PhotoView exports as sprites.
8.9
The package now supports OLE and I found this of major help and a good
upgrade from CableNews I. Because anti-aliased text with a lot of detail
can take a long time to redraw on an ARM2, OLE is vital. Any frame can
be edited in !Edit and then re-imported. More than once, I was grateful
when an é needed to be an è in a long bit of text. Caution here though
because memory constraints will cause problems − you can get !CableMake,
!Edit, !Draw and !Paint to work together in 4Mb, but only by having a
small font cache.
8.9
The results were excellent. I could make complex dissolving caption
sequences by working forwards and backwards using common frames to keep
registration. There is video support in the slides and stories to allow
transparency, and I can’t wait to have a Millipede genlock on the
Risc PC to try high quality graphics − special Modes are provided to
give the maximum TV resolution. You can also print the slides, and this
option is very useful for giving out notes to an audience. In future
releases, you will also be able to print to 35 and 70mm slides.
8.9
Stories
8.9
The method of linking the slides is crucial, and CableMake provides a
good selection of effects, such as unrolls and blinds, to make up a
story. The story can be auto-run or done manually, time delays are
preset and it beeps when slides are ready for display. A true roller
caption is not provided, but slides can be slid down into position one
after another. There is an editing system so that both a story and a
slide can be loaded into !CableMake.
8.9
!CableView
8.9
This application takes a story file and displays its slides. You can
distribute this software in non-commercial applications if you own
!CableNews, so it’s possible to give a disc to clients for viewing on
another computer or update point-of-sale information on several
computers. Commercial applications need a licence from Lindis.
8.9
The display method can be preset from the preferences options and, if
you stop the display, you can step between individual slides. It’s also
possible to put a large pointer on the screen.
8.9
When you quit the application, it infuriatingly asks if you want to do
so!
8.9
Conclusions
8.9
CableNews II is an improvement on version 1, and existing owners should
upgrade. If you are buying a titling or presentation package, there is
also the choice of !Titler from Clares.
8.9
CableNews is very intuitive to use and allows menuing over the full
frame slide − very useful to tweak colours and position over a video
frame. I’ve mentioned the drawbacks, but would recommend this as an very
good starting point for producing excellent presentations. I had a play
with 24-bit sprites on the system but soon ran into memory problems,
although this is because of my machine, not the package. A computer with
4Mb is fine for overhead projection notes etc and lower resolution 256
colour graphics. I think the XAT Video Utilities disc should be included
in this suite of programs, to provide VT clocks and test cards for
setting up equipment − call it !CableSet? I would also move the story-
making part of the program into a separate application so that, if
memory is tight, you can reset the story without loading the whole of
CableMake.
8.9
This application works well and does what it says. If you are involved
in any sort of presentation, you will need it. There are plans to expand
its capabilities and existing owners will be able to receive updates by
returning master discs. I’m now standardising on it and building up a
library of styles and slides.
8.9
My clients like what it provides, and that’s good for business.
8.9
CableNews II is priced at £149 +VAT from Lindis International or £165
through Archive, with low cost upgrades from Presenter Story and
CableNews I, obtainable through Lindis.
8.9
I’m happy to discuss video and audio uses on Acorn platforms either via
Paul or on [e-mail]. u
8.9

8.9
VerbMaster-French
8.9
Graham Campbell
8.9
I am looking here at VerbMaster-French by Nigel Caplan which is a
Shareware package.
8.9
Learning and practising verbs in a foreign language is a difficult job
which is fairly tedious at the best of times, since it involves much
repetitive learning and testing, so any way in which the trusty computer
can help with repetitive random tests is to be welcomed. It’s then just
a question of whether one likes, and can get on with, the design of the
program.
8.9
What you get
8.9
VerbMaster comes on a single 800Kb floppy and is a ‘modular’ verb
learning and testing package. Registration with the author costs £7.50
for a single user (£10 site licence) for the first verb ‘module’
(currently this is the French one), and £5 (site £10) for subsequent
ones. Potential users need RISC OS 3.11 or greater and, if you’re
working from floppy, the application needs to have ‘seen’ the !Scrap
directory.
8.9
I have run the program on my A440/1 with RISC OS3 and ARM3, on an A3000
1Mb machine with OS3 upgrade, each with no problems. I also ran it on a
Risc PC, since the author wondered whether there would be any problems.
There didn’t appear to be any major ones; the Homerton Medium font which
I had working for the Desktop didn’t upset the program’s window display,
except for one prompt in red in the Test Window − no illegibility
problems, though.
8.9
Having printed out the text_file containing the ten pages of (abridged)
User Guide, it was clear that the program is a comprehensive one. With
it, you can learn on-screen the verbs you want to grasp, get a
randomized test in all (or one, or all-but-one) tense(s), and you can
choose ‘regular’ or ‘irregular’ verbs only, or both. If you select the
test to be done on-screen, you state the number of questions to be fired
and click START.
8.9
There’s an option for a printed test (with answers printed at the end)
and then the randomised questions are sent to a text file, ready for
printing out. No obvious check is made to see whether the number of
questions asked for is greater than the number of verb-forms in memory,
so don’t select 500 as I did − (I was just bug-chasing!) − you get an
infinite look at the hourglass! Also, you can get a CSV file ‘print-out’
− for loading into PipeDream or a Word Processing package − of all, one,
or a group of tenses for off-screen learning.
8.9
The tenses available are the Present, Future, Imperfect, Perfect,
Pluperfect, Past Historic, Conditional (curiously called the ‘Future
Conditional’ within the program), Future Perfect and the Conditional
Perfect. The Present Subjunctive Mood will come later. New verbs can be
added from on-screen menus, verb-forms can be edited or deleted from a
module, and the edited module saved back again. Double clicking on any
module loads its contents which overwrite the previously-loaded module.
8.9
How it performs (pros and cons)
8.9
Double-clicking on !VerbMast loads a utility module and opens two filer
windows on screen. In one, there’s a !Help file available which conforms
to Acorn’s Interactive Help system and directories housing the text
files of the ‘manuals’, the modules you subscribe to or create, and the
printouts you may create. Double-clicking on !French in the other filer
window loads a ‘tricolore’ icon on the icon bar ready to start, having
claimed 512Kb of workspace.
8.9
Clicking <select> on this brings up two windows − a ‘learning’ window
showing the verb under study and a control window. There’s only room for
the je / tu / il / nous / vous / ils forms so, alas, one in the oeil for
les dames. Will they be consoled to read that il a is labelled “He
(She&It)”? Also, the extremely commonly used on doesn’t get an airing.
This is a shame, since in the compound tenses taking être, much is made
in the testing process of ‘agreements’ over plurality and gender and so
you never see printed out, or on screen, elle est allée or elles sont
parties, for example, or even the non-agreement of on est allé meaning
we went ... / people (in general) went ... .
8.9
Using the mouse and clicking in the Control-Panel’s windows changes the
verb and its tense displayed in the Display Window. Also on the Control
Panel are buttons for initiating a test, adding an irregular verb,
adding a regular verb, or for what is called ‘cyclic addition of an
irregular’. You are supposed to be able to add tense after tense to an
infinitive without having to re-enter the infinitive, but this feature
wasn’t working on my review copy. Clicking <menu> over the Display
Window gives access to a menu from which you can edit a verb, delete a
verb, and save back the edited module.
8.9
The verb test
8.9
Having learnt all these verb forms, it’s time for the test. Select ‘x’
questions (10 by default) and we’re off. Two windows open − the Test
Window and the Statistics Window. I must admit that I find the screen
now too cluttered. Icons show us, in the Test Window, which question
we’re on and ask:
8.9
  Please enter the [ils] form of the Future Conditional tense of the
verb [avoir]:
8.9
I got the first verb ‘wrong’ because my A440/1 wakes up with CAPS ON,
and a correct answer in upper case is marked wrong. A minor point, but a
*FX202,16 from within the program (or in the !Run file) would have
sorted that one. For ease of entering accents, there is a window with
the seven most-needed accented characters showing, which can be clicked
on to insert them into any of the input icons. You need to have a wide
screen mode selected and to put the accent window outside the test
windows, since whenever you click <enter> to enter your answer for
assessment, it goes to the back of the stack and you have to call it up
again each time from the menu. I have to confess I find it easier, if
I’m inputting from the keyboard, to use good old Alt+233 for é etc.
Reaching for the mouse for the sake of a final é after having typed my
way through vous vous seriez habill gets a bit of a pain, especially if
you’ve had to call up your accents window (again!) first.
8.9
One good thing and one bad thing together now become evident. Verbs
which have become reflexive in compound tenses often need an agreement,
as do the few verbs which always take être. Vous could be a lads’ night
out, or the W.I., or one lad, or one W.I. member. So the ‘correct’
answer for the computer is vous vous seriez habillé(e)(s), and you may
well think this a pain to have to enter. Well, it is, but a window to
the side of the answer-input-box can be called up and you can click on
one of a menu of endings: (e) / (e)s / (e)(s) / s . (I should have liked
to see a null selection here. If a plain s qualifies for being on the
menu then ‘nothing’ does too, since il s’est habillé in a sense ‘agrees’
with a non-ending, and a student must deliberately decide to add
nothing.) The down-side is that you always have to think in terms of
these wretched endings. It’s a pity the test can’t say:
8.9
  Using PARTIR, how do you say: “They would have left (m)”   (ils
seraient partis)
8.9
and, later ...
8.9
  Using PARTIR, how do you say: “They would have left (f)”  (elles
seraient parties)
8.9
I just found it a bit tiring on the eye and brain being asked the rather
grammatical question mentioned above (Please enter the ...) and then
have the statistics window telling me I’ve got ‘x’ correct / ‘x’ wrong /
‘x’ questions left out of a total of ‘n’ questions, and that:
8.9
The [ils] form of the [Future Conditional] tense of the verb
[s’habiller] is [ils se seraient habillés” ]. Your response is Correct
and your answer was [“ils se seraient habillés”].
8.9
You could argue pedagogically that this is reinforcement, I suppose!
8.9
Conclusions
8.9
The program very comprehensively tests full grammatical knowledge of all
tenses (no negatives or interrogatives). Note that there is no reference
to meanings − you are tested grammatically. The ability to print out
verb information and tests is very useful, and that all works fine.
There’s a minor bug in the scoring system in that your last response
doesn’t get logged.
8.9
A few of the verb forms are wrong in the supplied module:
8.9
se lever is missing its grave accent in all the Future and Conditional
forms.
8.9
vouloir in the plural conditional forms is incorrect − as my screen shot
shows!
8.9
faire gives vous faisez in the Present Tense
8.9
attendre gives ils attendient and descendre gives ils descendient in the
Imperfect.
8.9
lire gives ils lûrent, voir gives vous vâtes and vouloir gives tu
voulous, all in the Past Historic.
8.9
It’s just a question of loading the module into !Edit and chasing up the
errors but it’s a tad annoying to have to do so − and, of course,
presupposes that you know the stuff before learning it from the program!
Which of us, though, has not made any mistakes when entering data into
our programs?!
8.9
Let him who is without sin .... !
8.9
I hope this is useful to any prospective French students out there. In
the end, you takes your choice and − with Shareware − you pays your
money, I hope! u
8.9

8.9
CD-Fast
8.9
Fred Grieve
8.9
Those of you who have taken the plunge and installed a CD-ROM drive will
probably have already experienced some slight disappointment when you
first used the system. I refer to having hundreds of megabytes of data
on-line and having to patiently wait for the computer to access it as
CD-ROM does not have very fast access times. A CD-ROM drive is
noticeably slower than a hard drive.
8.9
As the title suggests, this utility from Eesox is designed to speed up
CD access times. It does this by using computer memory to cache CD
directory information. This is done transparently, so the user is not
aware of CD-Fast working in the background. Eesox claim that it will
work with all versions of CDFS, all CD drives, all Acorn computers and
will not interfere with the successful operation of any CD-ROM! Bold
claims indeed and, unfortunately, I can only verify some of them!
8.9
The supplied software can be used in two different modes of operation.
Minimum memory mode uses just 8Kb (for both code and cache), and
enhanced mode uses 36Kb. Enhanced mode gives the best performance, but
it does so at the expense of using more memory.
8.9
Installation is very simple, as CD-Fast is supplied as an application
which installs on the icon bar. Selecting the CD-Fast icon opens a
configuration window which allows the user to select either minimum
memory mode, enhanced memory mode, or switch off CD-Fast altogether.
Whichever mode is set can then be saved to become the default.
8.9
For the ‘techies’, CD-Fast is a relocatable module which is controlled
by a standard WIMP user interface. As this WIMP user interface also
occupies some memory, it is possible to install only the CD-Fast module.
If this is done as part of the boot sequence, the module opens a window
when the computer is booting which tells the user it has installed
successfully and which mode of operation it is using.
8.9
With 10Mb RAM fitted to my Risc PC 600, shortage of memory is not a
problem, so I configured CD-Fast to work in enhanced mode (which the
manufacturer recommends as the standard mode of use). In the best
scientific tradition, I then conducted some short tests on my system,
which consists of a Cumana double-speed SCSI CD-ROM drive and SCSI 2
interface. The results are shown in the left-hand half of the table
below.
8.9
I also tried out CD-Fast on a HCCS Ultimate double-speed IDE CD-ROM
drive. The results are published in the right-hand half of the table
below.
8.9
As can be seen, the increase in access speed for IDE is very
significant! They certainly confirm Eesox’s own claims that enhanced
mode can bring about a 31% − 44% increase in performance. Even a 21%
decrease in the time taken to open the root directory window of a photo
CD, using the SCSI drive, is quite impressive.
8.9
Indeed, the only fly in the ointment, in my IDE tests, was the Photo CD.
This is a ‘gold’ multi-session CD which contains 28 of my own
photographic images. The times it threw up were extremely inconsistent
whether CD-Fast was used or not. The 87% increase shown above in the IDE
table is therefore highly suspect. I also fully accept that one person
when using a stopwatch to clock times as short as 1 − 2 seconds must
produce times which are not very accurate. However, I do feel that these
times are representative of what can be achieved, and are very
significant, as they prove beyond any doubt that CD-Fast works.
8.9
Conclusion
8.9
Although beginning this review from a position of some cynicism, I must
now eat humble pie! Not only does CD-Fast work but it works extremely
effectively. It is now installed in my computer when the system boots
and I wouldn’t be without it.
8.9
A site licence for CD-Fast is also available, as is a multi-user version
for networks called NetCDFast. Contact Eesox for more information.
8.9
CD-Fast costs£25 +£2 p&p +VAT from Eesox, or £30 through Archive u
8.9

8.9
Electronic Books and PaperOut
8.9
Jochen Konietzko
8.9
The market for electronic books seems definitely about to take off − at
least that was the impression one could get at this year’s Frankfurter
Buchmesse (Frankfurt book show − the largest of its kind in the world),
where CDs were presented in Hall 1.
8.9
Electronic books differ from the well known Multimedia CDs, like
Compton’s Interactive Encyclopaedia, in two ways:
8.9
u Rather than on a “naked” 12 cm CD, they are issued on a smaller 8 cm
CD which is housed in a caddy similar to an MO disc or a floppy.
8.9
u The emphasis is definitely on text; pictures and sound are there, but
no animations.
8.9
To read such a book, it is not necessary to buy a Sony Data DiscMan for
which they were originally developed. Any computer with a CD-ROM drive −
and the right software − can process these discs.
8.9
Acorns, PCs and others
8.9
The Tools company in Bonn, Germany, has published a reader for
electronic books called PaperOut (distributed in Britain by Cumana).
There are versions for MacOS, NeXTSTEP, SunOS, Windows, and − last but
by no means least − RISC OS (2 or higher).
8.9
The price for the Acorn version is £49.95 +VAT (£57 from Archive).
8.9
PaperOut can access electronic books on any media, from CDs through
floppies to databases on the Internet.
8.9
The package
8.9
PaperOut comes in what looks like a VHS video cassette case, shrunk to
paperback size. Inside this is a DD floppy disc, accompanied by a small
slip of paper describing the basics − how to get the CD out of its caddy
and how to install the software. The disc contains PaperOut itself, some
drivers for Cumana’s CD-ROM drives, the contents of the leaflet as a
text file and a very extensive online help in the form of an EB, plus a
second EB with a list of  available electronic books (about 150).
8.9
Installation
8.9
You simply drag PaperOut to the desired place on your hard disc and then
a double click will put the usual icon onto the icon bar.
8.9
From this point onwards, things may well get a bit rough. The review
copy I received from Cumana (version 2.1b, 24-Aug-94) came together with
“The Hutchinson Guide to the World” (more about that later); I took out
the CD, put it into the adapter ring (£4 through Archive) for my CD-ROM
drive (Toshiba 3401TA with the cached Morley podule − software revision
1.17, CDFS 2.21) and had PaperOut mount the disc. The drive’s light
flashed for about four minutes, then I received a number of error
messages which basically told me that the disc’s format was not
understood.
8.9
Phone calls to Morley and Tools showed that Morley indeed have not
(yet?) incorporated support for electronic books in their software, and
that there is a newer version of PaperOut (2.1d, 14-Dec-94) which can
supplement the CD-ROM drive’s own drivers.
8.9
Tools promised to send the new version straight away.
8.9
This they did, and the new version works without a hitch. (I usually get
an error message like “Target area − check condition” when I mount the
CD, but this has no apparent consequences.)
8.9
Moving through a book
8.9
Once a text has been loaded, you can scroll through it in various ways;
with the mouse and the scroll bar, or with a number of keys − the cursor
keys and PageUp/PageDown, together with Shift and Ctrl, allow every
possible move. As an example, you can move up/down one page with PageUp/
Down or Cursor left/right or Shift-Cursor up/down.
8.9
Some words are highlighted (in the default setting in dark blue, but
this, like the fonts and font sizes used, can be changed at will). These
highlights mark cross references, either to other text passages, or to
pictures or sound samples. Once you have followed one of these
references far enough, the backspace key (or clicking on an icon) will
bring you safely back to your starting point.
8.9
The Acorn version makes use of adjust-clicking, the idea being that only
if you follow the various references with select-clicks, will every new
article appear in its own window.
8.9
Looking for information
8.9
The program offers several search methods:
8.9
u Menu Search − the table of contents of an EB is arranged in the form
of menus with various submenus for chapters, sub-chapters and
paragraphs.
8.9
u Word/end-word search − important expressions are printed in bold
typeface; word search and end-word searches allow you to look for them,
and for chapter headings, by typing in the first or the last few letters
of these words. The result is a list of the paragraphs containing those
words.
8.9
u Keyword search − this is a full text search where you can look for any
word contained in the text of a volume. This yields a list of paragraphs
containing this word.
8.9
u Consultation/graphic search − this is the rather grand name for the
fact that both text and graphics can contain hyperlinks, and clicking on
them will move you straight to the referenced subject.
8.9
u Multi-search − here you can enter up to four words which will be
searched for at the same time.
8.9
Most electronic books contain only some of those search options.
8.9
Data Export
8.9
Both words and pictures can easily be exported in Text / Sprite format
but there is no option for WYSIWYG printing of text passages.
8.9
The Hutchinson Guide to the World
8.9
This EB was supplied by Cumana for my review.
8.9
Mounting the disc opens this window:
8.9
First of all, I tried to find ‘Norwich’.
8.9
Looking for the keyword ‘Norwich’ brought up four articles: East Anglia,
England, Norfolk and Norwich.
8.9
This is the article on Norwich itself:
8.9
A menu search was not possible because my version of the CD has a bug −
clicking on the volume “Cities, Regions, ...” leads instead to the menu
for  “Travel quotes”.
8.9
The maps in this book are miserable little things (see above), allowing
no graphic search.
8.9
Contents of the disc:
8.9
u Volume 1 (Countries) contains a statistical section, similar to the
CIA fact book, (for the UK: 5752 bytes), background articles (UK: 20292
bytes) and small maps (UK: see above)
8.9
u Volume 2 (Cities) contains short articles like the one on Norwich
above; due to the bug mentioned above, getting an overview was rather
difficult, so I just did a few word searches. There are, for example,
339 entries starting with “A”. Large regions are covered in longer
articles; England was granted 7596 bytes.
8.9
u Volume 3 (Quotes) contains gems like “Oxford − one of the supreme
gratifications of travel, the perfect prose of Gothic.” Henry James,
English Hours 1905.
8.9
u Volume 4 (Earth data) is made up of tables − from the Beaufort and
Richter scales to Famous Gold Rushes.
8.9
Some other electronic books
8.9
To show the areas covered so far by electronic books, here are a few of
the titles listed by PaperOut (just a small excerpt from the first part
of the list, up to the letter C):
8.9
u 2020 Vision: Transform Your Business Today to Succeed in Tomorrow’s
Economy
8.9
u 4000 Questions de Culture Générale
8.9
u AA Hotels and Restaurants in Britain and Ireland
8.9
u American Heritage Electronic Dictionary & Roget’s II Electronic
Thesaurus (200,000 words / 40,000 words with 500,000 synonyms)
8.9
u Berlitz Business Traveller
8.9
u Bluffer’s Guide to High Society
8.9
u Call of the Wild by Jack London
8.9
u Chambers Science & Technology Library
8.9
u Chronik des 20. Jahrhunderts mit Personenlexikon
8.9
u Cronologia de los Descubrimientos (descubrimientos = discoveries)
8.9
u CIA World Fact Book
8.9
u Compton’s Concise Encyclopedia (contains the 26 volume encyclopaedia)
8.9
A number of electronic books are available through Archive at £43 each.
8.9
Electronic books vs. multimedia CDs
8.9
I had the opportunity to browse through the German “Bertelsmann
Universallexikon”, which is available in both formats. The comparison is
as follows:
8.9
The text items were identical, except that the EB contained slightly
more of them. (Possibly, the search routines are just organised
differently, but keyword searches on words like ‘England’ or ‘Germany’
always came up with a slightly higher number of finds in the EB.)
Pictures and sound samples were also identical; the quality of the
photos in the EB was bad, but this need not be so; another EB I have
seen (about the Solar System) contains spectacular colour photos of the
planets and their moons. Sound samples range from pieces of music,
through bird calls, to passages from important speeches.
8.9
The EB does not contain any animations; on the other hand, getting
started (from the moment you insert the CD to the moment the first text
you are looking for appears on the screen) is rather faster with the EB.
8.9
On the whole, I found the multimedia CD more fun, the EB more effective.
8.9
Niggle
8.9
There is just one thing I don’t like about PaperOut. Keywords (in full
text search) are usually hidden somewhere in an article. PaperOut does
not  highlight them in any way, and so they tend to be hard to find; in
contrast, on all multimedia CDs I have so far seen, words found are
shown inverted in the same way as in Edit or Impression.
8.9
Conclusion
8.9
For people serious about data retrieval, PaperOut is a useful product.
Electronic books are not as flashy as multimedia encyclopaedias, but −
if only because there are no disc-space-guzzling animations − facts are
quite easy to find. PaperOut is recommended.
8.9
The Hutchinson CD − without the bug mentioned − is an excellent source
for data concerning the various countries of the world. Do make certain,
though, that the disc you buy is an upgraded, bug-free version. u
8.9

8.9
Norwich
8.9
Cathedral city in Norfolk, E England; population (1991) 121,000.
8.9
Industries include shoes, clothing, chemicals, confectionery,
engineering, and printing. It has a Norman castle (with a collection of
paintings by the Norwich school; Cotman and Crome); 15th-century
Guildhall, medieval churches, Tudor houses, Georgian Assembly House. The
University of East Anglia 1963 has the Sainsbury Art Centre for Visual
Arts on its campus. The Sainsbury Laboratory 1987, in association with
the John Innes Institute, was founded to study the molecular causes of
disease.
8.9